us all He was oppressed and afflicted yet he opened not his mouth he is brought as a Lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her sheerers is dumb so he opened not his mouth He was taken from prison and from judgement he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of his people was he stricken It pleased the Lord to bruise him he put him to grief Isa 53. What was his whole life but the exercise of Love and self-denial He denyed himself in Love to his Father obeying him to the death and pleasing him in all things He denyed himself in Love to mankind in bearing our transgressions and redeeâ—ing us from the curse by being made a curse for us Gal. 3. 13. He made himself of no reputation and tock upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the Cross Phil. 2. 6 7 8. And this he did to teach us by his example to deny our selves to be like minded having the same love being of one accord of one mind that nothing be done through strife or vain-glory but in lowliness of mind that each esteem others better than themselves Looking not every man after his own matters but every man also after the things of others and thus the same mind should be in us that was in Christ Jesus Phil. 2. 3 4. 5. He denyed himself also in obedient submission to Governours He was subject to Joseph and Mary Luke 2. 51. He paid tribute to Caesar and wrought a Miracle for money rather than it should be unpaid Matth. 17. 24 25 26. He disowned a personal worldly Kingdom Joh. 18. 36. when the people would have made him a King he avoided it Joh. 6. 15. as being not a Receiver but a giver of Kingdoms He would not so much as once play the part of a Judge or divider of inheritances teaching men that they must be justly made such before they do the work of Magistrates Luke 12. 14. And his Spirit in his Apostles teacheth us the same Doctrine Rom. 13. 1 Pet. 2. 13 14 15 16 17. Eph. 6. 1 5. And they seconded his example by their own that we might be followers of them as they were of Christ What else was the life of holy Paul and the rest of the Apostles but a constant exercise of Love and Self-denial Labouring and travelling night and day enduring the basest usage from the world and undergoing indignities and manifold sufferings from unthankful men that they might please the Lord and edifie and save the souls of men and living in poverty that they might help the world to the everlasting riches In a word as Love is the fulfilling of the whole Law as to the positive part so is selfishness the evil that stands in contrariety thereto even self-conceitedness self-willedness self-love and self-seeking and thus far self-denial is the sum of our obedience as to the terminus à quo and Christ hath peremptorily determined in his Gospel that If any man will come after him he must deny himself and take up his Cross and follow him and that whosoever will put in a reserve but for the saving of his Life shall lose it and whosoever will lose his life for his sake shall find it Matth. 16. 24 25. And that he that doth not follow him bearing his Cross and that forsaketh not all he hath for him cannot be his Disciple Luke 14. 27 33. According to the nature of these holy rules examples is the nature of theworkings of the Spirit of Christ upon the soul He usually beginneth in shewing manhis sin and misery his utter insufficiency to help himself his alienation from God and enmity to him his blindness and deadness his emptiness and nothingness and then he brings him from himself to Christ and sheweth him his fulness and sufficiency and by Christ he cometh to the Father and God doth receive his own again It is one half of the work of Sanctification to cast ourSelves from our Understandings our Wills our Affections and our Conversations to subdue self-conceitedness self-willedness self-love and self-seeking to mortifie our carnal wisdom and our Pride and our concupiscence and our earthly members And the other and chiefest part consisteth in setting up God where self did rule that his Wisdom may be our Guide his Will our Law his Goodness the chiefest object of our Love and his service the work business of our lives The Spirit doth convince us that we are not our Own and have no power at all to dispose of our selves or any thing we have but under God as he commands us It convinceth us that God is our Owner and absolute Lord and that as we are wholly his so we must be wholly devoted to him and prefer his interest before our own and have no interest of our own but what is his as derived from him and subservient to him Fear doth begin this work of self-denial but it 's Love that brings us up to sincerity The first state of corrupted man is a state of selfishness and servitude to his own Concupiscence where pride and sensuality bear rule and have no more resistance than now and then some frightening uneffectual check When God is calling men out of this corrupted selfish state he usually or oft at least doth cast them into a state of Fear awakening them to see their lost condition and terrifying them by the Belief of his Threatnings and the sense of his indignation and making use of their Self-love to cause them to fly from the wrath to come and to cry out to the messengers of Christ What shall we do to be saved Some by these Fears are but troubled and restrained a little while and quickly overcoming them settle again in their selfish sensual senseless state some have the beginnings of holy Love conjunct with Fear of whom more anon And some do from this principle of Self-love alone betake themselves to a kind of Religious course and forsake the practise of those grosser sins that bred their Fears and fall upon the practise of Religious duties and also with some kind of faith do trust on the satisfaction and merits of Christ that by this means they may get some hopes that they shall escape the everlasting misery which they fear All this Religion that is animated by Fear alone without the Love of God and Holiness is but preparatory to a state of grace and if men rest here it is but a state of Hypocrisie or self-deceiving religiousness For it is still the old Principle of selfishness that reigns Till Love hath brought man up to God he hath no higher end than Himself The true mark by which these slavish professors and hypocrites may discern themselves is this They do the Good which they would not do and the evil which they do not they would do
of self-denyal 2. As God was mans ultimate End in his state of innocency so accordingly man was appointed to use all Creatures in order to God for his Pleasure and Glory So that it was the work of man to do his Makers will and he was to use nothing but with this intention But when man was faln from God to himself he afterwards used all things for himself even his carnal self and all that he possessed was become the provision and fuel of his lusts and so the whole creation which he was capable of using was abused by him to this low and selfish end as if all things had been made but for his delight and will But when man is brought to Deny himself he is brought to restore the Creatures to their former use and not to sacrifice them to his fleshly mind so that all that he hath and useth in the world is used to another end so far as he denyeth himself than formerly it was even for God and not himâ—elf 3. In the state of Innocency though man had naturally an aversness from death and bodily pains as being natural evils and had a desire of the welfare even of the flesh it self yet as his body was subject to his soul and his senses to his Reason so his bodily ease and welfare was to be esteemed and desired and sought but in a due subordination to his spiritual welfare and especially to his Makers Will So that though he was to value his Life yet he was much more to value his everlasting life and the pleasure and Glory of his Lord. But now when man is faln from God to Himself his Life and earthly felicity is the sweetest and the dearest thing to him that is So that he preferreth it before the Pleasing of God and everlasting life And therefore he seeketh it more and holdeth it faster as long as he can and parteth with it more unwillingly As Innocent Nature had an appetite to the objects of sense but corrupted nature hath an enraged greedy rebellious and inordinate appetite to them so Innocent nature had a love to this natural earthly life and the comforts of it but corrupted Nature hath such an inordinate love to them as that all things else are made but subordinate to them and swallowed up in this gulf even God himself is so far loved as he befriendeth these our carnal ends and furthereth our earthly prosperity and life But when men are brought to Deny themselves they are in their measures restored to their first esteem of Life and all the prosperity and earthly comforts of life Now they have learned so to love them as to love God better and so to value them as to prefer everlasting life before them and so to hold them and seek their preservation as to resign them to the will of God and to lay them down when we cannot hold them with his Love and to choose death in order to life everlasting before that life which would deprive us of it And this is the principal instance of self-denyal which Christ giveth us here in the Text as it is recited by all the three Evangelists that recite these words He that saveth his life shall lose it c. And what shall it profit a man to win all the world and lose his soul By these instances it appears that by self-denyal Christ doth mean a setting so light by all the world and by our own lives and consequently our carnal Content in these as to be willing and Resolved to part with them all rather than with him and everlasting life even as Abraham was bound to love his Son Isaac but yet so to prefer the Love and Will of God as to be able to sacrifice his Son at Gods Command And the Lord Jesus himself was the liveliest Pattern to us of his Self-denyal that ever the world saw Indeed his whole life was a continued practice of it And it hath oft convinced me that it is a special part of our Sanctification when I have considered how abundantly the Lord hath exercised himself in it for our example For as it is desperate to think with the Socinians that he did it only for our Example so it is also a desperate Error of others to think that it was only for satisfaction to God and not at all for our Example Many do give up themselves to Flesh-pleasing upon a misconceit that Christ did therefore deny his flesh to purchase them a liberty to please theirs As in his Fasting and Temptations and his sufferings by the reproach and ingratitude of men and the outward Poverty and Meanness of his condition the Lord was pleased to deny himself so especially in his last Passion and death As I have shewed elsewhere he loved his natural life and peace and therefore in manifestation of that he prayeth Father if it be thy Will let this Cup pass from me But yet when it came to the comparative practical Act he proceeded to choose his Fathers Will with death rather than life without it and therefore saith Not my Will that is my simple love of life but thy Will be done In which very words he manifesteth another will of his own besides that which he consenteth shall not be done and sheweth that he preferred the pleasing of his Father in the Redemption of the world before his own life And thus in their measure he causeth all his Members to do so that life and all the comforts of life are not so dear to them as the love of God and everlasting life 4. When God had created man he was presently the Owner of him and man understood this that he was God's and not his own And he was not to claim a Propriety in himself nor to be affected to himself as his own nor to live as his own but as His that made him But when he fell from God he arrogated practically though notionally he may deny it a propriety in himself and useth himself accordingly And when Christ bringeth men to deny themselves they cease to be their own in their conceits any more Then they resign themselves wholly to God as being wholly his They know they are his both by the right of Creation and of Redemption And therefore are to be disposed of by him and to glorifie him in body and spirit which are his 1 Cor. 6. 19 20. Rom. 14. 9. To be thus heartily devoted to God as his own is the form of Sanctification and to live as God's own is the truly Holy life 5. As man in Innocency did know that he was not his own so he knew that nothing that he had was his own but that he was the Steward of his Creator for whom he was to use them and to whom he was accountable But when he was fallen from God to himself though he had lost the Right of a Servant yet be graspeth at the Creature as if he had the Right of a Lord He now takes his Goods his
doctrine of Christ and how much it doth to make them like or dislike their teachers or any point or practice in Religion And he is a stranger even among Divines themselves that seeth not the sway that self doth bear in their judgements and disputes and course of life and the choice of their party or society to which they joyn themselves CHAP. VI. Mens great aversness to costly or troublesome duties 3. ANother discovering instance of the rarity of self-denyal is this The great aversness of men to any costly or troublesome or self-denying duty how necessary soever how plainly soever revealed in the Scripture and how generally soever acknowledged by the Church As if self had a Negative voice in the making of Laws for the Government of the world and none must be binding without its consent I shall come down to some more particular instances 1. The great duty of charitable relieving our brethren in necessity to the utmost of our power is commonly made almost nothing of in the world And men cheat their souls by thinking they are passed from death to life because they love the brethren with such a cold and barren love as will neither lay down estate for them nor venture life for them but think they are sure Christians because they can say as the believers that James mentioneth Depart in peace be you warmed and filled but give them not that which is necessary thereto James 2. 16. Though it be told them plainly by Christ himself that it is not a fruitless uneffectual love but that which causeth them to feed and cloath and visit the Saints that must stand them instead at judgement Matth. 25. and the Apostle asketh them How the love of God can dwell in that man that seeth his brother have need and shutteth up the bowels of his compassion from him 1 John 3. 17. Yet do men think that by dropping now and then a penny they have discharged all this great duty And when they see many wayes by which they might promote the Gospel and help the Church and serve God with their estates yet self will not let them see the meaning of the plainest Scriptures that do require it 2. When men should practise the great duty of forgiving injuries trespasses and debts and of loving our enemies and blessing them that curse us and praying for them that hate and persecute us how stubbornly doth selfishness resist these duties What abundance of words may you use in vain with most men to perswade them to any of this work No they must have their right and that which is their own though it be to the undoing of their brother Passion and revenge even boil within them and the thoughts of an injury stick in their minds and if they do take on them dissemblingly to forgive it yet they cannot forget it nor heartily love a brother that displeaseth them much less an enemy And all this is from the dominion of self and shews that it prevaileth above God in the soul and therefore shews a graceless heart 3. When the Ministers of the Gospel themselves should be painful in their great and necessary work and should watch over all the flock Acts 20. 28. warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that they may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus Col. 1. 28. condescending to men of the lowest sort and teaching them in season and out of season what reasonings and shifts will self bring in to resist so great and excellent a duty and prove it no duty and that God will give them leave to spare their pains and all because of the Powerful interest of self 4. And let the same Ministers have a disordered flock that hath scandalous members especially if they be great ones or many and how rarely will they do their duty to them in plain reproof and in case of impenitency and continuance in sin by Publick Admonition and Rejection what shiftings and cavillings will they find against this displeasing work of Discipline even when they will reproach a man themselves whose Opinion is against Discipline and when they have preacht and written and disputed so much for it and almost all parties are agreed of the necessity of it in the substance yet when it comes to practice it cannot be done without procuring mens hatred and opposition and laying us open to much incommodity and therefore self doth perswade us to forbear and whether God or self have the more servants even yet in a reformed Ministry I leave you to judge as your observation of the congregations through the Land shall direct you But were it not for self I should undertake to do more for discipline and personal Instruction with most Ministers by one Argument than I have done by a volume and you might see an unanimous concurrence in the work and consequently a great alteration in the Churches 5. And whence is it but from selfishness that plain and close Application in our Sermons is taken to be an injury to those that think themselves concerned in it If a Minister will speak alike to all and take heed of medling with their sores they will patiently hear him but if he make them know that he meaneth them in particular and deal closely with them about their miserable state or against any special disgraceful sin they fall a railing at him and reproaching him behind his back and perhaps they will say They 'le hear him no more O saith the selfish ungodly wretch I know he meant me to day had he no body but me to speak against As if a sick man should be angry with the Physitian for giving directions and medicines to him in particular and say Had he no body to give Physick to but me Were there not sick men enough in the Town besides me When Christ told the Despisers of the Gospel of the certain and dreadful destruction that was near them Mat. 21. 41 44 45. its said that When the chief Priests and Pharisees had heard his Parables they perceived that he spake of them A hainous business and therefore they sought to lay hands on him but that they durst not do it for fear of the multitude 6. Nay let a Minister preach but any such doctrine as seems consequentially to be against Self and to conclude hardly of them and they are ready to say as Ahab of Micaiah I hate him for he prophesieth not good of me but evil 1 Kings 22. 8. Let us but tell them how few will be saved what holiness and striving and diligence is necessary though we have the express word of God for it Heb. 12. 14. Mat. 7. 13 14. Luke 13. 24. 2 Pet. 1. 10. yet because they think that it makes against their carnal peace they cannot abide it Plain truth is unwelcome to them because it is rough and grates upon the quick and tells them of that which is troublesome to know Though they must know their sin and danger and misery or
interest and honour to your selves Holiness is an Inclination and Dedication to God by which two we are said to be separated to him And wickedness is an Inclination and Addictedness or Devotedness to our selves above God or as separated from God And this Inclination Disposition or Separation of man to Himself instead of God is it that I call self or selfishness and this self must it self be first destroyed as to the predominant degree And therefore let us First observe wherein this selfish Disposition doth consist which must be destroyed and then Secondly wherein the selfish Interest doth consist that must be denied And first the selfish Disposition consisteth in these several parts that follow 1. The principal part of it consisteth in an inordinate Self-love This is a corruption so deep in the heart of man that it may be called his very Natural Inclination which therefore lieth at the bottom below all his Actual sins whatsoever and must be changed into a New Nature which principally consists in the Love of God This is Original sin it self even in the heart of it This speaks what man by Nature is even an inordinate self-lover And as he is so he will act In this all other vice in the world is virtually contained even as all grace is in the Love of God which made the Schoolmen say that Love is the Form of all Grace not as they are this or that Grace in particular not of Faith as Faith nor of Hope as Hope but of Faith Hope c. as vital or gracious acts because the respect to the End is essential to the means as a means and therefore the respect to God as the End is Essential to Faith Hope c. as a means to him and therefore that Grace of Love which is terminated on the End must have an essential participation concurrence or influence on those that are directly terminated on the Way or Means and must convey somewhat of its very essence to them and so far as they partake of that essence of Love so far are they indeed those special Graces which carry the soul to God its End And in this sence we may allow the distinction between Fides Spes c. formata charitate which is true Christian Faith and Hope and Fides Spes c. informis which is but an opinion and dream And so it is in the body of sin When self-love doth reign it is the Heart of wickedness And though every sin hath its own specifick nature yet all are virtually in self-love and are so far mortal or prove men graceless as they are informed by the essential Communication of self-love For self being the End informeth all the means as they respect it I say the more to you of this because indeed it is a weighty truth for the right understanding of the true nature of Grace and sin and I doubt many are in the dark for want of understanding considering it A man that feareth and Loveth God and an unsanctified man may be both overtaken with the same sin perhaps a gross one as Noahs and Davids and Peters was and yet this may be a mortal sin in the ungodly I mean such as proves him in a state of death and yet not so in the gracious person The wicked will deride this in their ignorance as if we made God partial but it 's no such matter The Papists cannot endure it but suppose Peter David and Noah were quite without the Love of God and so were again unsanctified men but this is their error It was not from the Power of reigning self-love and the Habitual absence of the Love of God that these men or any Saints did sin but from a particular act of mortified self-love by a surprize upon the neglect of the actual exercise of the Love of God But all the sins of unsanctified men or at least their common sins are from the Habitual reign of self-love and the Habitual absence of the Love of God And therefore the sins of the Saints are as the Schoolmen speak of the graces of the ungodly unformed they be not Mortal sins in the sense aforesaid because they be not naturalized informed animated by the malignity and venom of the Mortal End and Principle which is Habitual reigning self-love But those of the wicked are sins informed by this inordinate self-love as an habitual reigning sin and therefore being animated by its malignity are mortal Yet say not that this makes God partial and not to hate the same sin in one as he doth in another For two things must be taken in 1. Where the heart is sanctified such sins are strangers perhaps one Godly man of ten or twenty may be guilty of one of them as Noah was of drunkenness once in all his life since his conversion For it will not stand with grace to live in them For such as a mans Love and Inclination and nature is such will be the drift of his Life And would not you have God make a difference between those that sin once and those that live in it 2. Besides will not any honest man make a great difference of the same acts according as they come from different hearts you will not take a passionate word from a Father Husband or Wife so ill as the same word from a malicious enemy If an unthrifty Son should spend you twenty shillings wastfully you will not prosecute him as you would do a thief or an enemy that takes it from you violently Wilful murder and casual man-slaughter have not the same punishment by the Law of the Land If you will make such a difference your selves of the same words or deeds as they come from different meanings and affections quarrel not with God for doing that which you confess is just and necessary to be done 1. The Faculty where this Disposition is principally seated is the Will which in man is the Heart of Morality whether Good or Evil. And the Principal Act is an Inordinate Adhesion of man to himself and Complacency in himself And this is the inordinate self-love that must be first mortified 2. The next faculty that self hath corrupted is the Understanding and here we first meet with the sin of self-esteem which is the second part of selfishness to be mortified It is not more natural for man to be sinful vile and miserable than to think himself vertuous worthy and honourable All men naturally over-value themselves and would have all others also over-value them This is the sin of Pride But of this I must speak by it self CHAP. XIV Self-conceitedness must be denied 3. THe next part of selfishness to be mortified is in the same faculty and it is called self-conceitedness And it consisteth of two parts the first is a Disposition to selfish opinions or conceits that are properly our own and the second is to think better of those conceits than they do deserve Naturally men are prone to spin themselves a web of
sometime all is comprehended in the term world and selfishness in the word flesh the world being that harlot with which the flesh commits adultery So 1 Joh. 2. 15 16. Love not the world nor the things that are in the world If any man Love the world the Love of the Father is not in him For all that is in the world the Lust of the flesh the Lust of the eyes and the Pride of Life is not of the Father but is of the world and the world passeth away and the Lust thereof but he that doth th will of God abideth for ever To these three heads therefore we shall reduce all that we have to say of this matter I. The selfish fleshy Pleasure that must be denied consisteth in these particulars following which I shall but briefly touch because they are so many 1. One Principal part of Sensuality or Self-interest consisteth in meats and drinks to please the Appetite So far as these are taken to fit us for Gods service and used to his Glory so far they are sanctified as before was said but when they are meerly to please the appetite they are offered to an enemy and are the fuel of lust Do you see any thing that your Appetite desireth whether meats or drinks whether for quality or quantity Take it not touch it not meerly upon that account but enquire whether it tend to the strengthning and fitting your bodies or minds for the service of God and if so take it if not let alone If your appetite had rather have Wine than Beer or strong Beer than small take it not meerly upon that account If your appetite would fain have one cup more when nature hath as much as is profitable deny that appetite If your appetite would fain be tasting of any thing that is not for your health deny that appetite If it would fain have one bit more when you have as much before as is wholesom or useful to you deny that appetite Or else you are guilty of flesh pleasing and plain Gluttony Quest But is it not lawful at a feast to taste of another dish or eat another bit when I think that nature needs no more what perplexities then will you cast men into to know just how many morsels they may eat Answ It is gluttony and no beter to take the creatures of God in vain and sacrifice them to a devouring throat which should be used only for his service That which is a mans ultimate end is his God What would you have plainer than express words of Scripture that tell you that whether you eat or drink it must be all to the glory of God 1 Cor. 10. 31. and that the fleshly do make their bellies their Gods Phil. 3. 18. And therefore when you have taken as much as suiteth with your end the service and glory of God you must not take more for another end the pleasing of your fleshly desires But for the scruples that you mention about the just proportion we need not be disquieted with them For God hath given us sufficient means to direct us to know what is for our good and what is superfluous and it is our duty in an even and constant way to use our Reason and keep as near the due proportion as we can and when we know that this is our desire and endeavour it were a sin against God to trouble our selves with continual or causless scruples or fears lest we do exceed or miss the rule For what can we do more than go according to the best skill we have and if for want of skill we should a little mistake it is pardoned with the rest of our daily infirmities and to trouble and distract our selves with causeless fears would more unfit us for Gods service than some degree of mistake in the proportion would do and so would be as great a sin as that which we feared And therefore our way is quietly and comfortably without distracting fears or scruples to do our best and use our prudence with self-denial and remember that we have to do with a Father that knows the flesh is weak when the spirit is willing But yet wilfully to cast away one cup or one morsel on the pleasing of our appetites when it no way fits us for the service of God and will do us no other good this is not self-denial but sensuality Quest But nature knows best what 's good for it self and therefore that which it desireth is to be judged best A Beast liveth as healthfully as a man that obeyeth his appetite only Is it not lawful to take either meat or drink on this account that the Appetite is pleased with it Answ 1. Some Beasts would presently kill themselves in pleasing their appetites if man that is Rational did not rule restrain and moderate them A Swine will burst himself with whey in half an hour A Beast in new after-grass will surfeit if he be suffered No Beast knows poyson from food but would soon perish by it in obeying his appetite 2. And yet as a Bâ—â—st hath no Reason so he is better provided to live without Reason than man is His appetite is not so corrupted by sin as ours is Original sin hath depraved and enraged our appetites And if man had not more use for his reason than a Beast even in ordering his natural actions God would not have given him reason to rule his appetite and commanded him to use it herein And who knows not that if a man did follow his appetite alone as Beasts do he were like to murder himself the next day or week or at least in a very little space The appetite would presently carry us to that for quality or quantity or both that would cast us into mortal diseases and soon make an end of us And in those diseases the pleasing it usually would be certain death And indeed this is a beastly doctrine that man that hath reason to rule his sensual inclinations should lay it by and please his appetite without it like a brute what more do all Gluttons Drunkards and Whoremongers but follow ther fleshly desires And if the desires of the flesh might be followed who would not be such as they in some measure That which is no sin in a Beast is a hainous sin in a man because man hath reason to rule his appetite and a Beast hath none and therefore is not capable of sin And for the body it 's certain that most of the diseases in the world are bred and fed by the pleasing of the appetite and I think that there 's few that are laid in their graves but this was the cause of it though the ignorant know it not and the sensual are loth to believe it And for the question whether we may not take any meat or drink purposely to please the appetite I answer yes as a means to fit us for duty but not as your chief end 1. Sometimes especially in weak bodies the
remember that Heathens themselves have chosen death First in case of some extream torment or other misery which they had no other hope to prevent or end But this was but a choosing a speedier or easier Death before a more grievous death though remote or before a death that had so great a misery for its fore-runner or at least before such a life as is a continual death And so the conquered Heathens would frequently kill themselves to prevent a more dishonourable cruel death from the hand of the Conqueror And so many a one in uncurable misery wiâ—â—eth rather to die than endure it partly because that the suffering is so great as to overcome all the comforts of life For I yield that some degrees of misery with life are more terrible to nature than death and partly because that they know they must die at last however Secondly in a desire of fame that they may leave behind them an honourable name when they are dead But this is not to desire death but life Fain they would live for ever and because they know that it cannot be obtained on earth they had rather die some honourable death a little sooner that their names may live when they are dead than to die ignominiously shortly after Thirdly And some have chosen to die for the publick good of their Country But as it 's very uncertain whether the desire of a living Name were not their greater motive so it was but a choosing a present death for their Country before a latter unavoidable death without any such advantage In all these cases a natural man may venture on death that knows he cannot scape it long but must shortly die whether he will or no. But if they could avoid it there 's very few would submit to death but believers and none but in one of these cases 1. To end or avoid some extream intolerable uncurable misery 2. To deliver their Country or friends 3. And whether any would do it upon their ungrounded hopes of better things in the life to come I leave to consideration But if it be taken for granted that a natural man may love 1. The comforts of life above it self 2. And the good of his Country or the world or his children above his life 3. Or some carnal felicity falsly conceited to be had in another life yet it is certain that none but a sanctified believer can Love God better than his Life or can prefer those spiritual heavenly joys which consist in the holy Love and Fruition of God before his life And therefore he that for these can deny his Life is indeed a Christian and none but be Though it be an ungrateful word to the ears of some I must say it again and none but he For this is the very point in which Christ for instance doth put our self-denial to the trial He that will save his life shall lose it Whether you Love an immortal holy life with God or this earthly fleshly life better is the great question on which it will be resolved whether you are Christians or Infidels at the heart and whether you are heirs of heaven or hell Some Love to God may be in the unsanctified but not a love to him above their lives and in some cases they may submit to death but not for the Love of God But both these set together that is a submitting to Death for the Love of God or a Loving of God above this life is the most infallible proof of your sincerity I confess flesh and blood must needs think this is a very hard saying and though they might consent to acknowledge it a Duty and a Reasonable thing to die for Christ and a note of excellency and a commendable qualification of some few extrordinary Saints yet it goeth very hardly down with them that it should be the lowest measure of saving grace that the weakest Christian must have it that will be saved For say they What can the strongest do more than die for Christ But to this I answer 1. There is no rom for objections against so plain a Word of God It is the wisdom of God and not our Reason that disposeth of the Crown of life and therefore it is his Wisdom and not our Reason must determine by what we shall attain it And if God say plainly that If any man come to Christ and hate not his own life that is love it not so much less than Christ that for his sake he can use it as a hated thing is used he cannot be his Disciple Luke 14. 26. it is too late for the vote of man or all the clamour of foolish reason to recal this resolution The word of God will stand when they have talk'd against it never so long we may destroy our selves by dashing against it but we cannot destroy or frustrate it 2. And whereas men ask What can the strongest do more than die for Christ I answer Abundance more They can die for him with far greater Love and Zeal and Readiness and Joy than the weak can do and so bring much more honour to him by their death Though there be no higher way of outward expressing our Love to Christ than by dying for him yet the inward work of Love may be in very different degrees in persons that use the same expression of it Some may come to the stake with a little Love comparatively and some with fervent hot affections Some have much ado to yield to die and some die so chearfully that they rejoyce in the opportunity of honouring God and passing to him Yea and in the Expressions there is much difference in the manner Some give up themselves with so much readiness as works more on the standers by than their meer patience or the death it self And some are drawn so hardly to it as drowneth much of the honour and fruit of their martyrdom Of this read Mr. Pinks Serm. on Luke 14. 26. Obj. But Nature is of God and Nature teacheth us to Love and save our Lives and is it like that the God of Nature will command and teach us to cast them away and so contradict his own Law of Nature Answ 1. As Nature teacheth you to love your lives so God doth not forbid you But 2. Is it Natural to man to be Reasonable as well as to be sensitive and animate To have a reasonable soul as to have a temporal life 3. And doth not Reason tell us by the light of Nature that God should be loved better than our Lives If it did not yet by the help of supernatural light even Reason clearly tells us this And it is no contradiction for God to bid you Love your lives but love him better And he that bids you seek the preservation of your lives doth plainly except that you resign them to his dispose and that you seek not to save them from him when he commandeth you to lay them down So that it is not simply
against Nature to consent to die but when it is for him that is the Lord and end of life it is agreeable to Nature that is though it be against our natural inclination as we are Animate and Sensitive yet is it agreeable to our true nature as reasonable And therefore lay all together it is to be said to be agreeable to Nature simply in such a case because it is agreeable to the Principal part in nature which should be predominant It is agreeable to nature also that Reason should dispose of the inferiour powers of the soul Object But when you have said all that you can as long as you plead against my nature I cannot consent to what you say words are but wind To perswade me to consent to die is as much as to perswade me not to feel when I am hurt or to be hungry or thirsty or sleepy which are not in my power because these things are Natural Answ 1. Though hunger and thirst and other natural and sensitive appetites or passions be not in your power yet a consent of the will to deny these is in your power As natural as it is to hunger and thirst your superiour faculty of Reason can prevail with you to suffer hunger and thirst in a Siege or sickness when the suffering of it will save your life You will be ruled by your Physician to forbear not only many a dish but many a meal which your appetite desireth And your Reason can perswade you to suffer the opening of a vein and the drawing out of your own blood yea or the cutting off a member when it is to save your life for all that feeling and self-love is natural to you And you are not acquainted with the nature of Friendship if you would not suffer much for a friend nor with humane affections if you would not suffer much for parents or children or your Country so that your will is free though your sense be not free nor your natural appetite Though you cannot choose but feel when you are hurt you might consent to that feeling for a greater good 2. And according to the tenour of this Objection you may as wisely and honestly plead for most of the wickedness of the world and say It is natural to me to lust and therefore I may play the Adulterer and fulfil it It is natural to me to desire meat and drink and therefore I may eat and drink as long as I desire it It is natural to me to seek to hurt those that I am much angry with or hate and therefore I may beat or kill them If you must deny the Passions and sensitive appetite and the inferiour faculties of nature in one thing why not in another These lower powers were made to be ruled by reason as beasts are made to be ruled by men and more And therfore seeing this Argument from Nature is but from the bruitish part of Nature it is but a brutish Argument And if yet you say that for all these words Death is so great an enemy to you that you cannot choose it I answer that is because your reason is not illuminated and elevated by faith to see the Necessity of choosing it and to see those higher and better things which by this means you may obtain Had you that heavenly life of faith and love which the spirit worketh in the Saints it would carry you above this present life and take you up with higher matters and shew you that and so shew it you as should procure your own consent to die But because this is the great point that Christ doth purposely here try our self-denial by and a point of such great necessity to be look'd after I shall stay a little longer on it while I give you first some Reasons to move you and 2. Some Directions to assist you to get a self-denying submission to Death when Christ requireth it The many lamentable defects in grace which the inordinate fear of death doth intimate I have already opened in the fourth part of the Saints Rest and therefore may not now repeat them but shall add some few Considerations more CHAP. XXXVIII Twenty Reasons for denying Life 1. COnsider that Our Lives are not our Own but God that doth require them is the Absolute Lord of them More truly than you are owner of any thing that you have in the world is he the Owner of your lives and you And therefore both in Reason and Justice we should be content that he dispose of his own If he may notfreely dispose of you your lives you may as well deny him the dispose of any thing and so deny him to be God for he hath the same right to you as to any thing else and the same power over you And therefore if you consent that he shall be God for which he needs not your consent you must consent that he be the Owner and Disposer of all and of you as well as all things else Otherwise he is not God 2. You can be content that the lives of others yea that all the world be at Gods dispose In reason you cannot wish it should be otherwise You are content that the lives of Emperors and Kings that are greater than you should be at his Dispose And is there not the same Reason that he dispose of your life as of theirs Are you better than they or more your own or hath the world more need of you than them or rather is it not unreasonable selfishness that makes so unreasonable a difference with you If Reason might serve the case is plain 3. You are contented that far greater matters than your lives should be at Gods dispose The Sun in its course the frame of nature Heaven and Earth and all therein are at his dispose and would you wish it otherwise Days and Nights and Summer and Winter and times and seasons are at his dispose and you dare not murmur that all the year is not Summer or day-light and that there is any Night or Winter The Angels of Heaven are at his dispose to do his will and are content to be used on earth for your service and they desire not to be from under his dispose And should you desire it or rather desire that his will may be done on earth as it is in Heaven If you would not have the Crowns and Kingdoms of the world at his Dispose and Heaven and Earth are at his Dispose you would not have him to be God But if you would have these greatest things at his dispose what are you then that your lives should be excepted 4. Whom would you have to be the Disposer of mens Lives but God Is any other fit for the undertaking No other can give life but he And no other can preserve and continue it but he If your life had been in any creatures hand you had been dead long ago For no creature is able to uphold it self much less another also Is
How loth soever you are you are sure to die You may turn you every way and look about you on the right hand and the left to all the friends and means in the world and you will never find a medicine that will here procure immortality nor ever scape the hands of death It is appointed to all men once to die and after that the Judgement Heb. 9. 27. And no man can change the Decrees of Heaven And seeing all your turnings and unwillingness cannot avoid it is it not better to submit to it willingly than unwillingly God doth impose it on you as a necessity Your willingness may make a vertue of Necessity and out of Necessity extract a reward but your unwillingness may turn your suffering into your sin and a Necessary death unto an unnecessary misery now and hereafter if you be not true believers as Paul saith of his Ministerial labours 1 Cor. 9. 16 17. If I do this thing willingly I have a reward but if against my will a dispensation is committed to me for necessity is laid upon me So I may say in the present case If you give up your lives willingly in the love of God you have a Reward but if you do not Necessity is upon you and die you must whether you will or no. You may scape the Reward by your unwillingness but death you cannot escape And me thinks you should see that it 's little thanks to you to give up that life which you cannot keep And yet this is all that God requireth Perhaps you think that though you cannot keep it still yet somewhat longer you may keep it But you be not sure of that The next hour may God deprive you of it And O what a dreadful thing it were if as soon as you have denied God your lives he should snatch them from you in his fury and cast you into Hell and if he should distrain for his own as soon as you have denied it him and you should die as enemies that would not die as Martyrs and as his Friends And in this sence hath my Text been many a time fulfilled He that will save his Life shall lose it 8. Consider also that it is upon terms of the highest advantage imaginable to your selves that God calls you to resign and lay down your lives It is not indeed to lose them but to save them as my Text doth promise you He that loseth his life shall save it No more than you lose your cloaths which you put off at Night and put on again in the Morning Or rather no more than you lose your lousie rotten rags when you put them off at Night and are to have in the Morning a Suit of Princely attire in their stead Will any man say these rags are lost At least they will not say that the man is a loser by the change That is not lost that is committed to God upon the ground of a promise Nor that which is laid out in his Servive at his command Reason will tell us that no man can be a loser by a course of submissive Obedience to God You cannot be at so much cost for him or offer him so dear a service which he is not able and willing to satisfie you for a thousand fold God will not be beholden to any man You cannot bring him in your debt beyond what he doth by his bountiful promise But if you could he would not continue in your debt You 'l make nothing of your death if you do not either undergo it for Christ or bear it submissively by the power of heavenly love constraining you Meerly to die whether you will or no as a fruit of sin is common to the most ungodly men But if the love of God can make you voluntarily submit to death whether natural or violent from persecutors what a glorious advantage may you make of it You will 1. Put your salvation more out of doubt â—han any other course in this world could do For whosoever perisheth it 's most certain that such as these all be saved 2. And therefore you may die with the greatest confidence and joy as having seen the matter of your doubts removed and dying in the very exercise of those graces that have the promise of salvation and in such a 〈…〉 as hath the fullest and most frequent promises in the Gospel 3. And then the Crown of Martyrdom is the most glorious Crown You will not have an ordinary place in heaven These are that part of the Heavenly Host that si and nearest to the Throne of God and that praise him with the highest joys who hath brought them through tribulations and redeemed them by his blood If a man should make a motion to you to exchange your cottage for a Palace and a Kingdom you would not stick at it as if it were against you because you must leave your ancient home And how much less should you be against it when you are but moved to step out of your ruinous cottage into glory when it would shortly fall upon your heads and you must leave it whether you will or no for nothing 9. What reason have you to be so tender of the flesh Is it the greatness of its suffering that you stick at Why you put poor Beasts and Birds to as much and so do the Butchers daily for your use and they must suffer it And why should the body be so dear to you for the matter of it what is it but earth and wherein is it more excellent than the beasts that perish I think God hath purposely clothed your soul with so poor a dress that you should be the less unwilling to be unclothed and might learn to set more by your souls than by your bodies and to make more carefully provision for them It seems he hath purposely lodged you in so poor a cottage that you should not be at too much care for it nor be too loth to leave it You have its daily Necessities and Infirmities and pains and somewhat of its filth and lothsomeness to tell you of its meanness And why should you be so loth that so poor a cottage so frail a body should be turned to dust Dust it is and to dust it is sentenced When the soul hath left it but a week men can scarce endure to see it or smell it And should the breaking of such an earthen Vessel be so unpleasing a thing to you And for its usesulness though so far as it is obedient it was serviceable to your souls and God yet was it so refractory ill disposed and disobedient that it proved no better than your enemy Many a temptation it hath entertained and cherished and many a sin hath it drawn you to commit Those senses have let in a world of vanity Those wandring eyes have called in covetousness and pride and lust Those greedy appetites have been so eager on the bait that they have too oft born down your faith and
down to be familiar with us and to bring us into a state of friendship and holy boldness with God himself And yet shall we draw back 17. I would put this question to you for your serious answer Can you be contented yea do you desire to have no more of God than here you have Is this much of the knowledge of him and his will and works sufficient for you Would you be no nearer him and enjoy no more of him What ever your flesh say sure the love of God in your hearts will not suffer you considerately to say so Consult with your new nature with the holy principle that is in you Me thinks you should not be content to remain for ever at such a distance from God as you are If you can I blame you not to be afraid of death If not Why then are you loth to go to him 18. And I would ask you also Whether you are content with the measure of sanctification which you have or which is to be attained in this life Are you content to live for ever with no more knowledge or love of God No more faith or love to Christ No more sense of the worth of Grace No more righteousness or peace or joy in the Holy Ghost No more meekness humility or heavenly mindedness Are you contented rather to live for ever under all the pride and ignorance and passion and selfishness and lust and worldliness and all other sins that here beset you rather than to remove to the place of perfection and yield that death shall break the vessel and nest of your corruptions If you care so little for the grace of God and see so little beauty in his image and see so little odiousness in sin that you had rather keep it for ever than go to God by the passage of death I blame you not to be afraid to die But if otherwise Why do you desire perfection and deliverance and yet be so loth to come and receive it When you know that it is not to be had on earth 19. Moreover are you contented to remain for ever as unserviceable to God as here you are Alas how little do you for him how much do you to displease him lay together all the service of your lives and how small and poor a matter is it And would you still live at these rates Will this content you Me thinks it should not if you have grace in your hearts Why then do you not desire to depart and to be with Christ There you shall be perfectly fitted for his service and therefore perfectly perform it What other service God will have for us we cannot yet tell but Love and Praise we are sure will be the chief and the rest will be good and holy and honourable what ever it be If you are Christians me thinks the sense of your unprofitableness and of your unpleasing frame of heart and life should be your daily grief and therefore you should desire the state where you may be more serviceable and not be so unwilling of it 20. Lastly I would ask you Are you contented to attain no other end of all your life and labours and sufferings than here you do attain What is it that you pray for and seek and strive for is it for no more than is to be had on earth If you have no higher design intentions or desires I cannot much blame you to be loth to die But if you have me thinks no man should be unwilling to attain his end What have you done and suffered so much for heaven and now would you not go to it Had you rather all your labour were lost Do you desire to be happy or do you not If you do as certainly you do would you not go where happiness it to be had when you are sure that it is not not to be had on earth What say you is there not plain reason in all this that I propound to you It is a sad case when men seek not God and Heaven as their felicity but only as a lesser evil than hell which they would endure rather than enjoy when they can keep no longer this earthly life which they account their felicity where this is the case it 's a sad case And were not this a common case there would not be so much unwillingness to depart And now Christian Reader I beseech thee weigh these foregoing Considerations and judge whether it be not a contradiction to thy profession and unseemly for a believer to be unwilling to die when God shall call him Much more to cast away evelasting life for the saving of his temporal life but a little longer O learn the needful lesson of self-denial especially in this point of denying your lives He that can do this can do all and may be sure that he is mortified indeed And he that can do all the rest and sticks but at this and could part with any thing for Christ save his life doth indeed do nothing nor is it esteemed self-denying It is a lesson therefore that is exceeding necessary to be learn'd and worthy all your time and diligence even to deny your Lives for the love of Christ Perhaps you will say We live in days of peace and liberty and therefore are not like to be called to Martyrdom What need then have we to learn this lesson I answer 1. You are uncertain what changes you may see but if you never suffer yet you must be sure that you have a heart that would suffer if God did call you to it For though you may be saved without suffering where you are not called to it yet you cannot be saved without a heart that would suffer if you were put upon it 2. And if you cannot deny your lives for Christ you will not sincerely deny your pleasures or profits or honours for him If you would not suffer death for him if he called you to it you will not sincerely suffer losses and wrongs and reproaches for him which almost every Christian must expect So that to try your own sincerity you should look after it 3. And it is certain that death will shortly come and then if you have not learnt this lesson to deny your selves even in case of life you will die unwillingly and uncomfortably At least me thinks I might reason thus with any man of you good or bad Either death is indeed terrible or not If it be not why do you so fear it when it comes If it be why do you not as well fear it before it comes even in your youth and health For you are sure then that you must die as if it were upon you A wonderful thing it is that mans heart should be so unreasonably insensible and that there should be so great a difference in the affections of most in regard of death It 's no matter of doubt or controversie whether they shall die He is a block and not a man that knoweth it
not as certainly now as he shall do in his sickness And yet in health these wretches will not be awakened so much to fear it as may restrain them from sin and help them to prepare for it It 's troublesome precise talk with them to talk of making ready to die Either they slight it or love not to hear or think of it And yet the same men when death is coming and they see they must away are even amazed with fear and horror And I cannot blame them unless they were in a better case But this I must blame them for as most unreasonable that they can make such a lamentable complaint when death and Hell are near hand and yet make so light of it all their life time CHAP. XXXIX Answer to their doubts that fear death BUt because this is the hardest part of self-denial and yet most necessary and the particular subject of my Text I shall stay upon it yet so much longer as to resolve a question of some doubting Christians and to give you some Directions for the furtherance of self-denial herein Object If it be a necessary part of self-denial to deny our own lives I am much afraid that I am no Disciple of Christ as having no true self-denial For I find that for all these Reasons I cannot be willing to die but when you have said all that can be said death is the most terrible thing in the world to me Answ I pray you lay together these following particulars for answer to this great and common doubt 1. Death as death is naturally dreadful to all and the best men as men are naturally averse to it and abhor it No man can desire death as death nor ought to do it If it had not been an evil to nature it had not been fit to be the matter of Gods punishment and to be Threatned to the world Threatnings would not do their work if that which is threatned were not naturally evil or hurtful and dreadful to the subject To threaten men with a benefit is a contradiction as much as to promise him a mischief and more 2. It is not therefore a simple Displacency or Averseness to die that God requireth you to lay by Self-denial consisteth not in reconciling us to Death as death For then he might as well perswade us to become Angels as to deny our selves and Preachers had as hard a work to do as to perswade men to cease to be men Death will be an enemy as long as it is death Even the separated soul hath so natural an inclination to union with its Body that the separation is part of the penalty to it And though heaven be their joy and Christ their life and fulness yet the separation from the body which they have even with Christ is a penalty and they have not that perfect measure of Joy and Glory as they shall have when they are joyned in the body again So that separation as such is penal to the soul in blessedness And even the separated soul of Jesus Christ that was more blessed than ours was as separated in a state of penalty when his body was in the grave Of which see my Appendix to the Reformed Pastor about the Descent into Hell 3. That which you have to look after therefore in your souls is not a love to death or willingness to death as death which no man hath or should have but it is 1. A Submission to it as a less evil than sin and Hell and the Displeasure of God and a choosing rather to die than wilfully to sin and forsake the Lord. 2. And a Love to that glory in the fruition of God which death is the passage to Seeing we cannot obtain the end of our faith and patience by any easier passage than death you must rather be content to go this strait and grievous way than miss of the state of eternal blessedness Let death be never so odious and dreadful to you if you had but rather die than forsake Christ by sin or miss of everlasting life with God you have that true self-denial even of life it self which is required in my Text. 4. And yet even a gracious soul may be so much unprepared as to desire to stay yet longer on earth though he be absent from the Lord while he is present in the body that so a better preparation may be made And also the love of God may make a man desire to stay yet longer for the service of the Church or to be with Paul in a strait between two Phil. 1. 21 22 23. 5. Have you not such pleasant apprehensions of the New Jerusalem and the coming of Christ in glory and the blessed state of the Saints in heaven as that you could most gladly enter into that blessed state by any other way than death And had you not rather die than miss of that felicity At least when you know that die you must had you not rather die sooner even a violent death by persecution than miss of your eternal life by saving your lives a little longer 6. And for your unwillingness to die as death is the last enemy to be conquered by Christ at the Resurrection so the fears of death and the power of it is the last evil that we shall be troubled with and you must not expect to be fully freed from these fears in this life for death will be death and man will be man But yet let me tell you that before you die God may very much abate your fears and very ordinarily doth so with his servants 1. By giving them that grace that is suited to a dying state and 2. By the help of sickness and pain it self And that is one great reason why sickness shall usually go before death that pain and misery may make the flesh even a weary of it self and make the soul a weary of its companion and both a weary of this miserable life And now I shall briefly name some few Directions which if you will practise you will more easily submit to death CHAP. XL. Directions to be willing to die Direct 1. BY all means endeavour the strengthening of your Belief of the Reality of eternal life and the truth of the promise of Christ concerning it For if you Believe it not you cannot die for it nor chearfully submit to a natural death through the hopes of it This is the sum or principal work of the Christian faith to Believe the everlasting life as procured for us by the love of the Father the Obedience Death Resurrection and Intercession of the Son and the Sanctification of the Holy Ghost It is the unsoundness or the weakness of this Belief that is the principal cause of our unwillingness to die Direct 2. By all means endeavour to get and maintain the Assurance of your Title to this Promise and Felicity Get sound evidence and keep it clear Expunge all blots without delay Take heed of such sin as woundeth Conscience
and wasteth comfort and grieveth the spirit of Adoption by which you are sealed to the day of Redemption and by which you have your peace and comforts If by such sin your souls are clouded and estranged from God be diligent in seeking for healing and reconciliation and rest not till your peace be made with God For while you think of him as displeased you will be afraid of coming to him and this will double the fears of Death Direct 3. Deny your selves first in the carnal and worldly comforts of this life or else you are unlikely to deny your selves in the matter of Life it self Disuse your selves from unnecessary pleasures of the flesh And learn to endure dishonour contempt and reproach from the world and sickness and poverty when it 's inflicted on you by the hand of God Till you can deny your ease and profit and appetite and honour and all the delight of this present world you are never likely to deny your lives sincerely To deny your lives doth contain the denying of all these and more and therefore you must learn the lesser if you would do the greater These are the parts of life as it were and it 's easier thus to overcome it in its parts than in the whole when particular Souldiers are destroyed the Army is the weaker And the use of suffering the Afflictions of this life will make you hardy and make death seem a smaller matter For when you thus Die Daily you will the more easily die once Besides Death is half disarmed when the Pleasures Interests of the flesh are first denied For the leaving of fleshly contents and pleasures is much of the reason of mens unwillingness to die And therefore when these are denied before-hand the Reasons of your unwillingness are taken away If you pull down the Nest the Birds will be gone Men that are loth to leave their Country would willingly be gone if their houses were fired or they were turned out of doors and their friends and goods were all sent away This is it that makes men so unwilling to die because they practise not Mortification in their health but contrarily study to live as Pleasingly as may be to the flesh and think it part of their Christian Liberty thus making Christ a carnal Saviour as the Jews conceive of their expected Messiah and taking up with a carnal false salvation not purchased by Christ but given by Satan in the name of Christ and assumed by themselves They make it their business to have buildings and lands and meats and drinks and honours and all things as pleasing as may be to the flesh and then they complain that they are unwilling to die and I easily believe him it is no wonder They make it the work of their lives to feather their nests and make Provision for the flesh and then complain that they are loth to leave those nests that they have been feathering so long and loth to scatter all the heap and treasure which they have been gathering And did you think that gathering it was the way to make you willing to leave it Men load themselves with the lumber and baggage of the world and then complain that they cannot travel on their journey but had rather sit down They fall a building them habitations in their way when they should have none but Inns or Tents and when they have bestowed all their time and cost and charges on them they complain of their hearts for being loth to leave them Such mad doings as these are not the way to be willing to die To provide for self and flesh in your Life-time is not the way to Deny your Lives Sirs the way is this if you will learn it and stick not at the cost and trouble Self must be here stript naked of all its carnal comforts so that it shall have nothing left o fly to or trust upon nor nothing lest tâ—at it can take delight in then it will away If you would drive ouâ—â—n ill Tenant you will cast out all their goods and leave them nothing but the bare walls and not so much as a bed to lie on and uncover the house over their heads and then they will be gone So if you cast out all your sensual commodities and delights that when the flesh looks about it shall see nothing but the bare walls and cannot find a resting place then death will be less grievous and less unwelcome Or rather indeed even the flesh and self must be mortified and in the sense in which it must be denied it must have no being or life that is as it is withdrawn from its subordination to God And then there will be nothing to rise up against your submission to Death Though nature as nature will keep you from Loving death as death yet were but self-denial perfect there would be nothing to keep you from submitting to it and desiring to pass through it to immortality O that you would but try such a self-denying life and you would certainly die an easie comfortable Death Direct 4. Suffer not unworthy thoughts of God to abide in your soul Think not of his Infinite Love and Goodness with doubtfulness or diminution You will never be willing to come to God while you think of him as cruel or as a despiser of his creatures or unwilling to do Good But when once you think of him as the surest greatest Good and your fastest friend and the most lovely object that can be conceived of and these thoughts are deep and wrought into the very nature of your soul then you will be ready more chearfully to die No man can love the presence of a tyrant or an enemy or of him that is so far above him that there is no communion with him to be had If you entertain such blasphemous thoughts of God you are unlikely ever to desire his presence See you think as honourably and magnificently of the Goodness and Love of God as you do of his Knowledge or his Power and as you would abhor any extenuating conceptions of the one so do of the other And then the Loveliness and glory of his face will draw out your desires and make you long to be with God Direct 5. And by such means as this aforesaid Labour to bring up your souls to live in the Love of God It is love that is the Divine and heavenly nature in us and therefore must needs incline us heaven-wards The nature of love is to long after communion with him that we love The more Love the more of God in the soul and the more desire after God This is the grace that must live for ever and therefore bendeth towards the place of its perfection It 's want of Love to God that maketh most of us so contented to be from him Strengthen and exercise all other graces as far as in you lieth but above all live in the exercise of this enjoying heavenly grace Direct 6. Consider of all
the burdens that are here upon you which should make you long to be with God One would think the feeling of them should force you to consideration and weariness of them and make the thoughts of rest to be sweet to you Have you yet not sin enough and sorrow and fear and trouble enough Or must God lay a greater load on you to make you desire to be disburdened Every hour you spend and every creature you have to do with afford you some occasion of renewing your desires to depart from these and be with Christ Direct 7. Observe and magnifie that of God which is here revealed to you in his word and works Study him and admire him in Scripture study and admire him in the frame of nature And when you look towards Sun or Moon or Sea or Land and perceive how little it is that you know and how desirable it is to know them perfectly think then of that estate where you shall know them all in God himself who is more than all Study and admire him in the course of Providences study and admire him in the person of Christ in the frame of his holy life in the work of Redemption in the holy frame of his Laws and Covenants study and admire him in his Saints and the frame of his holy Image on their souls This life of studying and admiring God and dwelling upon him with all our souls will exceedingly dispose us to be willing to come to him and to submit to death Direct 8. Live also in the daily exercise of holy Joy and Praise to God which is the heavenly Employment For if you use your selves to this heavenly life it will much incline you to desire to be there Exercise fear and godly sorrow and care in their places but especially after Faith and Love be sure to live in holy Joy and Praise Be much in the consideration of all that Riches of grace in Christ communicated and to be communicated to you And be much in Thanks to God for his mercies and chearing and comforting your soul in the Lord your God And thus the Joy of Grace will much dispose you to the Joys of glory the Peace which the Kingdom of God consisteth in will incline you to the peace of the everlasting Kingdom and the chearful Praising of God on Earth in Psalms or other ways of Praise will prepare and dispose you to the heavenly Praises And therefore Christians exceedingly wrong their souls and hinder themselves from a willingness to be with God in spending all their days in drooping or doubting or worldly dulness and laying by so much the Joy of the Saints and the Praises of God Direct 9. Dwell on the believing fore-thoughts of the everlasting glory which you must possess Think what it is that others are enjoying while you are here and what you must be and possess and do for ever Daily think of the Certainty Perfection and Perperuity of your Blessedness What a life it will be to see the blessed God in his Glory and taste of the fulness of his love and to see the glorified Son of God and with a perfected soul and body to be perfectly taken up in the Love and Joy and Praises of the Lord among all his holy Saints and Angels in the heavenly Jerusalem You must by the exercise of Faith and Love in holy Meditation and Prayer even dwell in the Spirit and converse in Heaven while your bodies are on earth if you would entertain the news of death as beseems a Christian But of this at large elsewhere Direct 10. Lastly if you would be willing to submit to death resign up your own understandings and wills to the wisdom and the will of God and Know not good and evil for your carnal selves but wholly trust your lives and souls to the Wisdom and Love of your dearest Lord. Must you be carking and caring for your selves when you have an Infinite God engaged to care for you O saith self I am not able to bear the terrors and pangs of death O saith Faith My Lord is easily able to support me and it is his undertaken work to do it My work is but to Please him and it 's his work to take care of me in life and death and therefore though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death yet will I fear no evil O saith Self I am utterly a stranger to another world I know not what I shall see nor what I shall be nor whither I shall go the next minute after death None come from the dead to satisfie us of these things O but saith Faith My blessed Father and Redeemer is not a stranger to the place that I must go to He knows it though I do not He knows what I shall be and do and whither I shall go and all is in his power And seeing it belongs not to me but to him to dispose of me and give me the promised reward it is meet that I rest in his understanding And it is better for me that his Infinite Wisdom dispose of my departing soul than my shallow insufficient knowledge I may much more acquiesce in his knowledge than my own O but saith self I fear it may prove a change of darkness and confusion to my soul what will become of me I cannot tell O but saith Faith I am sure I am in the hands of Love and such Love as is Omnipotent and engaged for my good and how can it then go ill with me If I had my own will I should not fear And how much less should I fear when I am at the will of God even of most Wise Almighty Love There is no true Centre for the soul to Rest in but the Will of God It is our business to Obey and Please his Will as dutiful Children and to commit our selves contentedly to his Will for the absolute disposal of us It is not possible that the Will of an Heavenly Father should be against his Children whose desire and sincere endeavour hath been to Obey and Please his Will And therefore learn this as your great and necessary Lesson with Joyful Confidence to Commit your selves and your departing souls to your Fathers Will as knowing that your Death is but the execution of that Will which is engaged to cause all things to work together for your good Rom. 8. 28. And say with Paul I suffer but am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and I am perswaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day 2 Tim. 1. 12. 1 Tim. 4. 10. Therefore we labour and suffer because we trust in the living God who is the Saviour of all men especially of those that believe say therefore as Job Though he kill me yet will I trust in him Or rather as Christ Father into thy hands I commend my Spirit Luke 23. 46. If the hands and Will of the Father was the Rock and
your lungs to breathe your stomach to turn your meat to nourishment and that nourishment into blood and spirits and strength Is it God or you Who is it that causeth the Sun to rise upon you in the morning to light you to your labours and to set upon you at night that the Curtains of darkness may be drawn about you and you may quietly repose your selves to rest Who giveth you strength to labour in the day and refeâ—â—eth you with sleep at night and provideth all the creatures for your assistance Is it you or God O Sirs me thinks such silly worms that cannot live a minute of themselves and cannot fetch a breath of themselves should easily see that they should not live to themselves but to him from whom and by whom they live Direct 7. If you would live in self-denial be sure that you keep the mastery of your senses and do not let them be ungoverned but shut them up when reason doth require it It is your Appetite and senses that feed this carnal selfish vice but reason and faith are both against it Whenever you consult with sense you may know what brutish advice you may expect Ask not therefore what is delightful nor what is for your carnal ease and peace but what is necessary to please the Lord and for your everlasting peace And if the tempter tell you This is the easier and the broader way tell him that it is not the honester nor the safer way And the question is not which is the fairest way but which is the way to Heaven It 's better go the hardest way to glory than the smoothest to damnation If you cannot keep under your sensitive appetite and subdue the eager desires of the flesh and learn to want as well as to abound to be empty as well as to be full you will never attain to self-denial Direct 8. To promote your self-denial me thinks it should be effectual to understand the great advantage that you have by the Communion and Society which you enter into when you deny your selves Though a Prince or Lord would be loth to enter into a Colledge or Monastery where there 's no Propriety and yet withal no care or want yet a poor labouring man or a beggar would be glad of such a life So you that cannot live of your selves me thinks should be glad of such a Community 1. Consider that the Lord Jesus is the Head of the Society who hath undertaken to make provision for the whole and is engaged for their security and to save them harmless and all the Riches of his grace and love belong to that Society and will be yours which is more than all that you can part with of your own yea more than all the treasures of the world It is therefore the noblest and richest Society in the world that you shall live in communion with if you will deny your selves 2. And the Saints that are the Members of that Society are the Brethren of Christ and the Heirs of Heaven And all these are your Brethren endeared in special love to you engaged to assist you by prayers and counsel and pains and purse and every way that you can so that well might Christ say that he that forsaketh any thing for him shall receive even an hundred fold in this life and in the world to come eternal life For this one sorry self that you forsake and it 's poor accommodations you have God for your Father and Christ for your Head and the Holy Ghost for your Sanctifier and Comforter and the Sripture for your guide and Saints for your Brethren Companions and Assistants engaged to you in truer and dearer love than your unsanctified friends that cast you off for the sake of Christ And had you rather be toiling and caring for your selves than let go self and enter into so blessed a Community where you may cast all your care away upon God who hath promised to care for you and may feed your selves in the daily delightful fore-thoughts of life eternal Direct 9. And me thinks it should much promote your self-denial to study well the self-denying example of Christ and his eminent servants that have troden in his steps Christ had no sinful self to deny nor any corrupted flesh to mortifie or subdue And yet he had a self-denial in which we must imitate him Rom. 15. 3. For even Christ pleased not himself but as it is written The reproaches of them that reproached thee are faln upon me We are told therefóre by Christs example that it is not only the pleasing of self as corrupted by sin but also a pleasing of natural self in things where God may lay a restraint on it or put it to the tryal that we must avoid and in which we must deny our selves Even as Adam was to have denyed his natural appetite before sin had corrupted it and Christ had an innocent natural will of which yet he saith Not my will but thine be done His whole life was a wonderful example of self-denial He lived in a low estaâ—â— and denyed himself of the Glory and Riches of the world and became poor though he were Lord of all that by his poverty we might be made rich 2 Cor. 8. 9. He lived under the reproach of sinners of sinners that he created of sinners whom he dyed for He would wear no Crown but a Crown of Thorns He would wear no Robes but the Robes of their reproach He yielded his cheeks to be smitten and his face to be spit upon by the vilest sinners whom he could with a word have turned into Hell And at last he gave himself for us on the Cross in suffering a reproachful cursed death Heb. 7. 27. Tit. 2. 14. Eph. 5. 2. 2. 25. Gal. 1. 4. And can you read such an example of self-denial given you by the Lord of glory and not be transformed into the image of it I think the study of a self-denying Christ is one of the most excellent helps to self-denial Take it from the Apostle himself Phil. 2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Fulfil ye my joy that ye be like-minded having the same love being of one accord of one mind let nothing be done through strife or vain-glory but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves Look not every man on his own things but every man also on the things of others Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be equal with God but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the Cross Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him Look therefore unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the
his soul And now Sirs I must let go this subject as to you that have heard it preacht for we must not be always on one thing but I am exceedingly afraid lest I have lost my labour with most of you and shall leave you as selfish as I found you because sad experience tells me that it is so natural and obstinate an enemy that I have discovered and that you have now to set your selves against I have done my work but self hath not done but is still at work in you I cannot now go home with every one of you but self will go home with you I cannot be at hand with every one of you when the next temptation comes but self will be at hand to draw you to entertain it When you are next tempted to error to pride to lust to contention with your brethren by words or real injuries what will you do then and how will you stand against this enemy If God be not your Interest and the dearest to your souls and you see not with his light and will not by his Will and self-denial be not become as it were your nature you will never stand after all this that I have said but self will be your undoing for ever If you have not somewhat within you as selfishness is within you to be always at hand as it is and ready and constant and powerful to overcome it it will be your ruine after all the warnings that have been given you And this preserving Principle must be the Spirit of God by causing you to Deny your selves Believe in Christ and Love God above all I say again that you may think on it and live upon it The sum of all your Religion or saving grace is in these three Faith Self-denial and the Love of God Departing from Carnal-self Returning home to God by Love and this by faith in the Redeemer is the true Christianity and the Life that leadeth to everlasting life FINIS A DIALOGUE OF Self-denial Flesh Spirit Flesh WHat become Nothing ne're perswade me to it God made me Something and I 'le not undo it Spirit Thy Something is not thine but his that gave it Resign it to him if thou mean to save it Flesh God gave me Life and shall I choose to die Before my time or pine in miserie Spirit God is thy Life If then thou fearest death Let him be all thy soul thy pulse and breath Flesh What! must I hate my self when as my brother Must love me d I may not hate another Spirit Loath what is loathsom Love God in the rest He truly love's himself that love 's God best Flesh Doth God our ease and pleasure to us grudge Or doth Religion make a man a drudge Spirit That is thy Poyson which thou callest Pleasure And that thy drudgery which thou count'st thy treasure lFesh Who can eudure to be thus mewed up And under Laws for every bit and cup Spirit Gods Cage is better than the Wilderness When Winter comes Liberty brings distress Flesh Pleasure 's mans Happiness The Will 's not free To choose our misery This cannot be Spirit God is mans End with him are highest joyes Sensual pleasures are but dreams and toyes Should sin seem sweet Is Satan turn'd thy friend Will not thy sweet prove bitter in the end Hast thou found sweeter pleasures than Gods Love Is a fools laughter like the joyes above Beauty surpasseth all deceitful paints What 's empty mirth to the delights of Saints God would not have thee have less joy but more And therefore shew's thee the eternal store Flesh Who can love baseness poverty and want And under pining sickness be content Spirit He that hath laid his treasure up above And plac'd his portion only in Gods love That waits for Glory when his life is done This man will be content with God alone Flesh What good will sorrow do us Is not mirth Fitter to warm a cold heart here on earth Troubles will come whether we will or no I 'le never banish pleasure and choose wo. Spirit Then choose not sin touch not forbidden things Taste not the sweet that endless sorrow brings If thou love pleasure take in God thy fill Look not for lasting joyes in doing ill Flesh Affliction 's bitter life will soon be done Pleasure shall be my part ere all be gone Spirit Prosperity is barren all men say The soyl is best where there 's the deepest way Life is for work and not to spend in play Now sow thy seed labour while it is day The Huntsman seeks his game in barren plains Dirty land answers best the Plowmans pains Passengers care not so the way be fair Husbandmen would have the best ground and air First think what 's safe and fruitful There 's no pleasure Like the beholding of thy chiefest treasure Flesh Nature made me a man and gave me sonse Changing of Nature is a vain pretense It taught me to love women honour ease And every thing that doth my senses please Spirit Nature hath made thee Rational and Reason Must rule the sense in ends degrees and season Reason's the Rider sense is but the Horse Which then is fittest to direct thy course Give up the reins and thou becom'st a beast Thy fall at death will sadly end thy feast Flesh Religion is a dull and heavy thing Whereas a merry cup will make me sing Love's entertainments warm both heart and brain And wind my fancy to the highest strain Spirit Cupid hath stuck a feather in thy cap And lull'd thee dead asleep on Venus's lap Thy brains are tipled with some wantons eyes Thy Reason is become Lust's sacrifice Playing a game at Folly thou hast lost Thy wit and soul and winnest to thy cost Thy soul now in a filthy channel lies While fancy seems to sore above the skies Beauty will soon be stinking loathsome earth Sickness and death mar all the wantons mirth It is not all the pleasure thou canst find Will contervail the sting that 's left behind Blind brutish souls that cannot love their God! And yet can dote on a defiled clod Flesh Why should I think of what will be to morrow An ounce of mirth is worth a pound of sorrow Spirit But where 's that mirth when sorrows overtake thee Will it then hold when life and God forsake thee Forgetting Death or Hell will not prevent it Now lose thy day thou 'lt then too late repent it Flesh Must I be pain'd and wronged and not feel As if my heart were made of flint or steel Spirit Dost thou delight to feel thy hurt and smart Would not an Antidote preserve thy heart Impatience is but Self-tormenting folly Patience is cordial easie sweet and holy Is not that better which turns grief to peace Than that which doth thy misery encrease Flesh When sport and wine and beauty do invite Who is it whom such baits will not incite Spirit He that perceives the look and sees the end Whither it is that
A TREATISE OF Self-Denial By Richard Baxter Pastor of the Church at Kederminster Phil. 2. 20 21. I have no man like minded who will naturally care for your estate For all seek their own not the things which are Jesus Christs LONDON Printed by Robert White for Nevil Simmons at the Princes Arms in Saint Pauls Church-yard 1675. A PREMONITION Concerning this Second Edition READER I Take the Love of God and Self-denial to be the sum of all saving Grace and Religion the first of the Positive part the second of the Oppositive or Negative part And I judge of the measure of my own and all other mens true piety by these two And it is the rarity of these two which assureth me of the rarity of sincere Godliness O how much selfishness and how little Love of God are too often found among those contenders for supposed true Doctrine true Worship true Discipline and the true Church who can say that their Zeal for these things doth eat up themselves their Charity their Peaceableness and their Brethren The same men that will not abate an opinion a formality a singularity for the Churches Peace and Concord or for the interest of Love and the healing of our wounds will as hardly abate a jot of their Wealth their worldly honour their carnal interest or selfish wills which shews that their zeal and seeming Orthodoxness and wisdom as in them is not from above but from beneath Jam. 3. 15 16 17. O that men knew what hearts-ease self-denial bringeth by mortifying all that corrupteth and troubleth the souls of sinners And if that part of Religion which seemeth hardest harshest be so sweet what is our Love and Delight in God but the foretaste of Heaven it self But the soul is seldom fit to relish this Doctrine aright till some special providence or conviction have made all the world notoriously insufficient for our relief But he that in or after sharp affliction will still be selfish in a predominant degree is next to hopeless I remember that one accounted of eminent wisdom a little before he forsook the Land of his Nativity made this the first word that ever he spake to me I thank you especially for your Book of Self-denial And when we are going out of the world we shall all be much fitter to relish and understand the Doctrine of Self-denial than now we are But though undeniable reason thus presented by the grace of God do much cure some particular souls yet alas the World the most of the Church visible the Land is so far uncured as that selfishness still triumpheth over our innocency piety and peace and seemeth to deride our hopes of remedy Were Profession as rare as true Self-denial I should be of their mind who reduce the Church into a much narrower room than either the Roman the National the Presbyterian or Independent Alas how few are those true Believers whose inordinate SELF-LOVE SELF-CONCEITEDNESS SELF-WILL and SELF-SEEKING are truly conquered by FAITH and turned into the LOVE of GOD as GOD and of the PUBLICK GOOD and of their NEIGHBOUR as themselves and into a HUMBLED UNDERSTANDING conscious of its Ignorance and into a humbled submissive WILL which is more disposed to follow than to lead and to obey than to be Imperious and domineer and into a LIFE entirely devoted to God and to the Common good But this complaint was made before But what we most feel we are most inclined to â—…r and to press that on others which we find most necessary to our selves And I must say that of all the Books which I have written I peruse none so often for the use of my own soul in its daily work as my Life of Faith and this of Self-denial and the last part of the Saints Rest One little thing I will here tell the Reader that no Book of mine except the two first had ever the word Dedicatory joyned to the Epistle by my consent but I have very oft prohibited it in vain whether by the oblivion or self-conceit of the Booksellers or the Printers I cannot tell Not that I condemn the word in others but that my Epistles were still of so different an importance as did require a different Title R. B. To the Honourable Colonel JAMES BERRY c. SIR PRovidence having deprived me of the opportunity of nearer converse with you which heretofore I have enjoyed yet leaving me the same affections they work towards you as they can and have chosen here to speak to you in the hearing of the world that my words may remain to the ends intended when a private Letter may be burnt or cast aside Flattery I am confident you expect not from me because you know me and know me to be your friend And yet my late Monitor hath made many smile by accusing me of that fawning crime I am told what it is to bless my friend with a loud voice Prov. 27. 14. I have learnt my self that Open rebuke is better than secret love and that faithful are the wounds of a friend but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful Prov. 27 5 6. And therefore I shall do as I would be done by Faithfulness and Usefulness shall be the measure of my message to you And they have commanded me to set before you this lesson of Self-denial and earnestly to intreat you and again intreat you that you will faithfully Read and Learn and Practise it Though I judged you have learnt it long ago I think it not needless to mind you of it again my soul being astonished to see the power of Selfishness in the world even in those that by Confessions and Prayers and high Professions have frequently condemned it Yet this is the Radical-mortal sin Where this lives all sins virtually lives Say that a man is Selfish and in that measure you say all that is naught of him as to his inclination That Selfishness is the summe of Vice and the Capital enemy of God of Common-wealths of Order and Government of all Grace and Vertue of every holy Ordinance and Duty especially of Unity and Brotherly Love and of the welfare of our neighbours and of our own salvation I have manifested to you in the following Discourse But alas what need we words to manifest it when the flames of discord and long-continued divisions among Brethren do manifest it When hatred strife variance emulation backbiting violence rebellions bloodshed resisting and pulling down of Governments have so lamentably declared it When such havock is made by it before our eyes and the evil spirit goes on and prospereth and desolation is zealously and studiously carried on and the voice of Peace-makers is despised or drowned in the confused noise Presumptuous are they self-willed they have not been afraid to speak evil of dignities 2 Pet. 2. 10. To speak evil was that the height of presumption and self-willedness then Alas how much further hath it proceeded now even under the Cloak of Liberty and
Jewels askt What they were good for Whether they would preserve him from calamity sickness or death and sent themhome when he heard they were of no more use You desire not the biggest shooes or cloathes but the meetest So do by your Dignity and Estate Aâ— you must ask but your Daily bread so must you desire no more Neither Poverty nor Riches but convenient food yet so as to learn to abound and to want and in every state to be content bearing Riches and Dignity if cast upon you without seeking but not desiring or gaping after them nor glorying in them Undergoing them as a burden with patience and self-denial and carefully using all for God but neither desiring nor using them for Carnal self They that will be rich or great fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition for the love of money is the root of all evil which while some coveted after they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows 1 Tim. 6. 9 10. Remember where you begun and where you must end Naked you came into the world and naked you must return to dust You brought â—â— Riches bither and none shall you take hence unless you learn the blessed art of making friends of the unrighteous Mammon and laying up a good foundation against the time to come and laying up a treasure in Heaven by the right improvement of your present mercies Though our life be nor circular but progressive the end as to our naturals is liker to the beginning than to the middle If we die not children yet liker to Children than we live It 's sad that the height and perfection of our Age should be the height of our folly And that childhood and retired Age should be least entangled with these vanities And it 's a lamentable stupidity that alloweth self so confidently to play its game so near eternity where one would think the noise of damned souls and the triumphant joyes of blessed Saints that past to rest by the way of self-denial should mar the sport and turn their pride into shame and trembling and the great things of mortality that are even at hand should drown the noise of pomp and pleasure and make the Greatness of this world appear an inconsiderable thing The Lord grant that you be no less humble and heavenly and true to Christ and above this world than when you and I had our first familiar converse and sure by this time you should be much better It 's said of Agathocles King of Sicilie that having been a Potters Son he would alwayes have together Earthen and Golden Vessels at his Table to remember him of his Original You tread on earth and bear about you such evidences of your fâ—â—â—ty as serve to tell you whence your 〈…〉 and whither it 's going and how it should be used now Remember also your spiritual new birth by what seed you were begotten and by what milk you were nourished and see that you degenerate not and do nothing unworthy that noble birth and the heavenly nature then received II. And remember that self-denial is never right unless it be caused by the love of God and as you deny your self so you entirely and unreservedly devote your self to him To this end I crave your observation of these few unquestionable precepts 1. Take heed of Unbelief and dread all temptations tending to it and live by that faith which maketh absent things to be to you as present and things unseen as if they were seen When Heaven once loseth its interest in the soul the world may play Rex and delude and destroy us at its pleasure 2. Take heed of all intrusions of selfishness Especially ☞ overvalue not your own understanding in the things of God Draw not a great picture of a little man Be not easily drawn to contemn the judgements of those that have searched the holy Scriptures with equal diligence and humility and with much more advantages of retirdeness and time and helps than you 3. Take heed of engaging your hand or tongue or secret thoughts against the faithful Ministers of Christ But further the work of Christ in their hands with all your power I am no Prophet but yet presume to say ☞ that if the reproaches of a faithful Ministry in England be purg'd away without some dreadful judgment of God on the Apostate reproachers or else a desertion of the Nation by a removing of our glory I shall wonder at the patience and forbearance of the Lord. It 's a dreadful observation to see so much of the spirit of Malignity possessing those that once said they fought against Malignants And that the Ministers and servants of the Lord are railed at by many of them as formerly they were by the worst of those that their hands destroyed And with this dreadful aggravation that then it was but some that were reviled and now with many it is all then it was under the name of Puritans and Round-heads and now it is openly as Ministers under the name of Priests and Black-coats and Presbyters and Pulpeteers What have these souls done that they are so far forsaken by the Lord The judge of all the world is at the door that will plead his servants cause in righteousness It is hard kicking against the pricks He that despiseth despiseth not men but God Persecution under pretence of Liberty is heightened with hypocrisie and is one of the greatest sins in the world But men are not catcht in Spiders webs though flies are our Lord will make us a way to escape Persecution never conquered Christ And because he lives we shall live also Here is the faith patience of the Saints I know that malice wants not words to cloak their iniquity He that hath will and power to do hurt hath so much wit as to pretend some reason for it Though I think that malice did never walk more nakedly since the Primitive persecutions than it doth in England at this day Their principles and profound contrivances they can hide but their Malignity goes stark naked and is almost grown past shame They talk against Mercenary Ministers as if they had never read 1 Cor. 9. Mal. 3. and such other Scriptures Or as if they envyed food and rayment to them that watch and labour for their souls to whom they are commanded to give double honour 1 Tim. 5. 17. when they envy not Provender to their Horses nor Fodder to their labouring Ox nor the crums to their very Dogs But the matter is that their wit is too scant and narrow for their malice and therefore the Popish and Malignant enemies have no fairer pretence to cast out the Ministry than by this engaging the Covetousness of the ignorant and ungodly sort against them They talk of our want of a just call But what is it in point of Calling that is wanting Abilities say some Succession
say others Miracles say others and indeed it 's what the Interest of selfish men doth dictate to the accusers O that they would tell us what is the due Call and where is the Ministery on Earth that hath it if we have not If they would have all laid by that work not Miracles we may see what they would have done to the Church If we are not what they would have us be and do not what they would have us do why do they not come in charity and meekness and shew us the course that we should take If we are fools or besides our selves it is for them The God whom we serve that will shortly judge us is our witness that we have chosen the Calling that we are in for their salvation and for his glory and that we labour in it in season and out of season toplease Christ and to profit them rather than to please or accommodate our flesh You brought me into the Ministry I am confident you know to what ends and with what intentions I desired it I was then very ignorant young and raw Though my weakness be yet such as I must lament I must say to the praise of the great Shepherd of the slock that he hath since then afforded me precious opportunities much assistance and as much encouragement as to any man that I know alive You know my Education and initial weakness was such as forbiddeth me to glory in the flesh But I will not rob God of his Glory to avoid the appearance of ostentation lest I be proud of seeming not to be proud I doubt not but many thousand souls will thank you when they have here read that you were the man that led me into the Ministry And shall I entertain a suspicion that you will ever hearken to those men that would rob you of the reward of many such works and engage you against the King of Saints Is it gain or ease or worldly advantages that continueth me in this work Let me speak as a fool seeing it is for the Lord in imitation of Paul that was no fool Was I not capable of Secular and Military advancement as well as others that are grown great Did I ever sollicite you so much as for my Arrears which is many hundred pounds You could scarce do the thing that would gratifie my flesh more than to silence and depose me from the Ministry Might I consult with the flesh I should be more against my own employment than many of my enemies are Did I but turn Physitian I â—â—uld get more worldly wealth And my Patients would not be so froward and quarrelsome and unthankful as most Ministers find their carnal Auditors to be When men come to me for Physick for their Bodies how submissive are they and how do they intreat and what thanks after will they return But when we would help their souls what cavils and quarrels and unthankful obstinacy do we meet with We must be much beholden to them to accept our help and all will not serve surn My Patients that have bodily Diseases will pay me if I would take it But if by giving them twice as much as I receive I could satisfie and further the cure of diseased souls how joyful should I be And must we deny our selves and all things in the world for our peoples sakes and after all be reproached as if we were a mercenary generation and sought our selves O how will God confound this ingratitude when he comes to judge Something they might say if the Ministers of England had the provision of the French and other Popish Clergy I will not presume to compare now our Calling fidelity and maintenance with Magistrates Judges and men of other professions Should I suppose the Magistracy epitomized in you and the Ministery in me I should give you an undue advantage For I suppose there are far more Ministers better than me than there are Magistrates better than you And yet I think you would not judge of me as the Ministers are judged of As there are no such Commissioners for ejection of scandalous insufficient negligent Magistrates as are for the ejection of such Ministers so if there were I should not doubt but you would quickly see which part were liable to more exceptions But when I took on the faithful Ministers round about me how many of them could I name with whom my conscience tells me I am not worthy to be compared in Holiness I am then amazed at the ingratitude of the Apostates of this age How constantly and zealously do they preach in publick at home and abroad some of them many times a week How diligently do they instruct the ignorant in private from house to house How unblameably and meekly and self-denyingly do they behave themselves And are men that once made profession of Religion become the enemies of such a Ministry O my soul come not thou into their secret unto their Assembly mine honour be not thou united Gen. 49. 6. I had rather be in the case of Turks yea of Canibals than of those men I know that many think our very ignorant Dividers to have more illumination and that the Pastors of the flocks are carnal ignorant men As the blind man that rusht against another and asked him whether he were blind that could not go out of his way But I have long tryed the spirits and I have found that these Cameleons have nothing within but lungs and that straw and little sticks may make the quickest and the lightest blaze but will not make a durable fire as the bigger fewel doth A Bittern hath a loud â—â— voice than a Swan or Eagle And in some one thing a bungler may excell a better work-man And what if one Minister excel in one gift and another in another and few in all Is not this like the Primitive administration You be not angry with your Apple-tree that it bears not Plumbs nor with your Pear-tree that it bears not Figs But I have been too tedious I beseech you interpret not any of these words as intended for accusation or unjust suspicion of your self God forbid you should ever fall from that integrity that I am perswaded you once had But my eye is on the Times with grief and on my Antient Dearest Friend with Love And in an age of Iniquity and Temptation my conscience and the world shall never say that I was unfaithful to my friend and forbore to tell him of the common dangers Dear Friend take heed of a glittering flattering world Remember that greatness makes few bad men good and few good men better As Seneca saith The Carkase is as truly dead that is embalmed as that which is dragg'd to the grave with hooks And this I say the time is short It remaineth that they that weep be as if they wept not and they that rejoyce as though they rejoyced not and they that buy as though they possessed not and they that use this world as they
that use it not for the fashion of this world passeth away 1 Cor. 7. 29 30 31. And when the soul of the worldly fool is required of him then whose shall all their Dignities and Honours and Riches be In the mean time God judgeth not by outward appearance as man judgeth nor honoureth any for being honoured of men Solus honor merito qui datur ille datur These Truths well known to you I thought meet here to set before your eyes not knowing whether I shall any more converse with you in the flesh and also to desire you seriously to read over these popular Sermons perswaded to the Press by the importunity of some faithful Brethren that love a mean Discourse on so necessary a subject Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation I rest Your Friend Richard Baxter Sept 12. 1659. THE PRFFACE Readers I Here present to your serious consideration a Subject of such Necessity and Consequence that the Peace and safety of Churches Nations Families and souls do lie upon it The Eternal God was the Beginning and the End the Interest the attractive the confidence the desire the delight the All of man in his upright uncorrupted State Though the Creator planted in mans Nature the principle of Natural self-Self-love as the spring of his endeavours for Self-preservation and a notable part of the engine by which he governeth the world yet were the parts subservient to the Whole and the whole to God And Self-love did subserve the Love of the Universe and of God and man desired his own Preservation for these higher Ends. When sia stept in it broke this order and taking advantage from the natural innocent principle of Self-love it turned man from the Love of God and much abated his Love to his neighbour and the publick good and turned him to Himself by an inordinate self-love which terminateth in himself and principally in his Carnal-self instead of God and the Common good so that Self is become All to Corrupted nature as God was All to Nature in its integrity Selfishness is the souls Idolatry and Adultery the sum of its Original and increased Pravity the Beginning and End the life and strength of actual sin even as the Love of God is the Rectitude and Fidelity of the soul and the sum of all our special Grace and the Heart of the new Creature and the life and strength of actual holiness Selfishness in one word expresseth all our Aversion Positively as the want of the Love of God expresseth it Privatively and all our sin is summarily in these two Even as all our Holiness is summarily in the Love of God and in self-denial It is the work of the Holy Ghost by sanctifying grace to bring off the soul again from Self to God Self-denial therefore is half the essence of Sanctification No man hath any more Holiness than he hath Self-denial And therefore the Law which the Sanctifying Spirit writeth on the heart doth set up God in the first Table and our neighbour in the second against the usurpation and encroachment of this Self It saith nothing of Love or Duty to our selves as such expresly In seeking the Honour and Pleasing of God and the Good of our neighbour we shall most certainly find our own Felicity which nature teacheth us to desire So that all the Law is Fulfilled in Love which includeth Self-denial as Light includeth the expulsion of darkness oâ— rather as Loyalty includeth a Cessation of Rebellion and a rejection of the Leaders of it and as conjugal fidelity includeth the rejection of Harlots The very meaning of the first Commandment is Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart c. which is the sum of the first Table and the Commandment that animateth all the rest The very meaning of the last Commandment is Thou shalt Love thy neighbour as thy self which is the summary of the second Table and in General forbiddeth all particular injuries to others not enumerated in the fore-going precepts and secondarily animateth the four antecedent precepts The fifth Commandment looking to both Tables and conjoyning them commandeth us to Honour our Superiours in Authority both as they are the Officers of God and so paticipatively Divine and as they are the Heads of humane Societies and our subjection necessary to Common good so that self-denial is principally required in the first Commandment that is The denying of self as opposite to God and his Interest And self-denial is required in the Last Commandment that is The denying of self as it is an enemy to our neighbours Right and welfare and would draw from him unto our selves Self-love and self-seeking as opposite to our neighbours good is the thing forbidden in that Commandment and Charity or Loving our neighbour as our selves and desiring his Welfare as our own is the thing commanded Self-denial is required in the fifth Commandment in a double respect according to the double respect of the Commandment 1. In respect to God whose Governing Authority is exercised by Governours their Power being a beam of his Majesty the fifth Commandment requireth us to deny our selves by due subjection and by honouring our Superiours that is to deny our own aspiring desires and our refractory minds and disobedient self-willedness and to take heed that we suffer not within us any proud or rebellious dispositions or thoughts that would lift us up above our Rulers or exempt us from subjection to them 2. In respect to humane Societies for whose Good Authority and Government is appointed the fifth Commandment obligeth us to deny our Private interest and in all competitions to prefer the publick good and maketh a promise of temporal peace and welfare in a special manner to those that in obedience to this Law do prefer the Honour of Government and the Publick Peace and welfare before their Own Thus Charity as opposed to selfishness and including self-denial is the very sum and fulfilling of the Law And selfishness is the radical comprehensive sin containing uncharitableness which breaks it all And as the Law so also the Redeemer in his Example and his Doctrine doth teach us and that more plainly and urgently this lesson of self-denial The life of Christ is the pattern which the Church must labour to imitate And Love and self-denial were the summary of his life Though yet he had no sinful self to deny but only natural self He denyed himself in avoiding sin but we must deny our selves in returning from it He loved not his Life in comparison of his love to his Father and to his Church He appeared without desirable form or comeliness He was despised and rejected of men a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief he bore our griefs and carryed our sorrows and was esteemed stricken smitten of God and afflicted he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities the chastisement of our peace was laid upon him the Lord laid upon him the iniquity of
They had rather live a sinful life if they durst and they had rather be excused from Religious duties except that little outward part which custom and their credit engage them to perform They are but like the caged birds that though they may sing in a Sun-shine day had rather be at liberty in the woâ—ds They love not a life of perfect holiness though they are forced to submit to some kind oâ— Religiousness for fear of being damned If they had their freest choice they had rather live in the Love of the creature than in the love of God and in the pleasures of the fleâ—h than in the holy course that pleaseth God The third state is the state of Love and none but this is a state of true Self-denial and of Justification and Salvation When we reach to this we are sincere we have then the Spirit of Adoption disposing us to go to God as to a Father But this Love is not in the same degree in all the sanctified Three degrees of it we may distinctly observe 1. Oft-times in the beginning of a true Conversion though the seed of Love is cast into the soul and the Convert had rather enjoy God than the world and had rather live in perfect holiness than in any sin yet Fear is so active that he scarce observeth the workings of the Love of God within him He is so taken up with the sense of sin and misery that he hath little sense of love to God and perhaps may doubt whether he hath any or none 2. When these Fears begin a little to abate and the soul hath attained somewhat of the sense of Gods Love to it self it Loveth him more observably and hath some leisure to think of the riches of his grace and of his Infinite excellencies and attractive goodness and not only to Love him because he Loveth us and hath been Merciful to us but also because he is Goodness it self and we were made to Love him But yet in this middle degree of Love the soul is much more frequently and sensibly exercised in minding it self than God and in studying its own preservation than the honour an interest of the Lord. In this state it is that Christians are almost all upon the inquiry after marks of Grace in themselves and asking How shall I know that I have this or that grace and that I perform this or that duty in sincerity and that I am reconciled to God and shall be saved Which are needful questions but should not be more insisted on than questions about our duty and the Interest of Christ In this state though a Christian hath the Love of God yet having much of his ancient Fears and Self-love and the Love of God being yet too weak he is much more in studying his Safety than his Duty and asketh oftner How may I be sure that I am a true believer than What is the duty of a true believer There is yet too much of Self in his Religion 3. In the third degree of Love to God the soul is ordinarily and observably carryed quite above it self to God and mindeth more the Will and Interest of God than its own Consolation or Salvation Not that we must at any time lay by the care of our Salvation as if it were a thing that did not belong to us or that we should separate the ordinate Love of our selves from the Love of God or set his Glory and our Salvation in an opposition But the Love of God in this Degree is sensibly predominant and we refer even our own Salvation to his Interest and Will In this Degree a Christian is grown more deeply sensible he is not his own but his that made him and redeemed him and that his principal study must not be for himself but for God and that his own interest is in it self an inconsiderable thing in comparison of the interest of the Lord and that Rewarding us with Consolation is Gods part and loving and serving him is ours assisted by his grace and that the diligent study and practice of our duty and the lively exercise of Love to God is the surest way to our Consolation In our first corrupt estate we are careless of our souls and are taken up with earthly cares In our estate of Preparation we are careful for our souls but meerly from the principle of Self-love In our first Degree of the state of saving grace we have the Love of God in us but it 's little observed by reason of the passionate fears and cares of our own salvation that most take us up In our second degree of holy Love we look more sensibly after God for himself but so that we are yet most sensibly minding the Interest of our own souls and enquiring after assurance of salvation In our third Degree of saving grace we still continue the care of our salvation and an ordinate self-love but we are sensible that the Happiness of Many even of Church and Common-wealth and the Glory of God and the accomplishment of his Will is incomparably more excellent and desirable than our own felicity And therefore we set our selves to please the Lord and study what is acceptable to him and how we may do him all the service that possibly we can being confident that he will look to our felicity while we look to our duty and that we cannot be miserable while we are wholly his and devoted to his service We are now more in the exercise of Grace when before we were more in trying whether we have it Before we were wont to say O that I were sure that I love God in sincerity Now we are more in these desires O that I could know and love him more and serve him better that I knew more of his holy will and could more fully accomplish it and O that I were more serviceable to him and O that I could see the full prosperity of his Church and the glory of his Kingdom This high degree of the Love of God doth cause us to take our selves as Nothing and God as All and as before conversion we were careless of our souls through ignorance presumption or security and after conversion were careful of our souls through the power of convincing awakening grace so now we have somewhat above our souls much more our bodies to mind and care for so that though still we must examine and observe our selves and that for our selves yet more for God than for our selves When we are mindful of God he will not be unmindful of us When it is our care to please him the rest of our care we may cast on him who hath promised to care for us Even when we suffer according to his will we may commit the keeping of our souls to him in well doing as to a faithful Creator 1 Pet. 4. 19 And it is not possible in this more excellent way 1 Cor. 12. 31 to be guilty of a careless neglect of our
salvation or of the want of a necessary Love to our selves For the higher containeth the lower and perfection containeth those degrees that are found in the imperfect This neglect of our selves through the Love of God is consequentially the most provident securing of our selves This carelesness is the wisest care This ignorance of good and evil for our selves while we know the Lord and know our duty is the wisest way to prevent the evil To be something in our selves is to be Nothing But if we be Nothing in our selves and God be All to us in him we shall be something Be not wanting to God and I am sure you cannot be wanting to your selves He will Reward if you 'l Obey I have shewed you hitherto the Nature and Necessity of Self-denial O that I could next shew you the Nations the Churches that are such indeed as I have described But when I look into the world when I look into the Churches of all sorts and consider men of all degrees my soul is even amazed and melted into grief to think how far the forwardest professors are swerved from their holy Rule and pattern O grievous case how rare are self-denying men Nothing in the world doth more assure me that the number that shall be saved are very few When nothing is more evident in Scripture than that none but the self-denying shall be saved and nothing more evident in the world than that self-denying men are very few Would God but excuse men in this one point and take up with preaching and praying and numbring our selves with the strictest party then I should hope that many comparatively would be saved Would he give men leave to seek themselves in a Religious way and to be zealous only from a selfish principle and would he but abate men this self-denial and the superlative Love of God I should hope true godliness were not rare But if self-denial be the mark the nature of a Saint and this as effected by the Love of God then alas how thin are they in the world and how weak is grace even in those few It is the daily grief of my soul to observe how the world is captivated to it SELF and what sway this odious sin doth bear among the forwardest professors of Religion and how blind men are that will not see it and that it hath so far prevailed that few men lament it or strive against it or will bear the most suitable remedy Alas when we have prevailed with careless souls to mind their salvation to read and pray and hold communion with the godly and seem well qualified Christians how few are brought to self-denial and how strong is Self still in those few What a multitude that seem of the highest form in zeal and opinions and duties delude themselves with a selfish kind of Religiousness And it grieveth my soul to think how little the most excellent means prevail even with Professors themselves against this sin What abundance of labour seemeth to be lost that we bestow against i When I have preached over all these following Sermons against it though grace hath made them effectual with some yet selfishness still too much bears sway in many that heard them O what a rooted sin is this How powerful and obstinate Men that seem diligently to hear and like the Sermon and write it and repeat it when they come home and commend â—â— do yet continue selfish And they that walk evenly and charitably among us in all appearance as long as they are smoothly dealt with when once they are but toucht and crost in their self-interest do presently shew that there is that within them which we or they before perceived not It was doubtless from too much experience of the selfishness even of Professors of Religion and of the successfulness of temptations in this kind that Satan did tell God so boldly that Job would sin if he were but touched in his self-interest Job 1. 9 10 11. 2. 4 5. Doth Job saith he fear God for nothing hast not thou made an hedge about him and about his house and about all that he hath on every side Thou hast blessed the work of his hand and his substance is increased in the Land But put forth thy hand now and touch all that he hath and he will curse thee to thy face As if he should have said Glory not of Job or any of thy servants It is not thee but themselves that they seek They serve thee but for their own commodity It is Self and not God that ruleth them and that they do all this for Seem but to be their enemy and touch their self-interest and cross them in their commodity that they may serve thee for nothing and then see who will serve thee This was the boast of Satan against the Saints of the most high which hypocrites that encouraged him hereto would have fulfilled and which God doth glory in confuting and therefore he gives the Devil leave to try Job in this point and putteth all that he had into his power ver 12. And when Satan by this succeeded noâ— he yet boasteth that if he might but touch him more nearly in his self-interest he doubted not to prevail c. 2. 4 5. Skin for skin yea all that a man hath will he give for his life Put but forth thy hand now and touch his bone and his flesh and he will curse thee to thy face This confidence had Satan even against such a servant of the Lord That there was none like him in the earth a perfect and upright man that feared God and eschewed evil c. 1. 8. And though the power of grace in Job did shame the boasts of Satan yet how frequently doth he prevail with men that seem Religious How truly may he say of many among us Now they seem godly but let the times turn and godliness undo them in the world and then see whether they will be godly Now they seem faithful to their Pastors and Brethren but give them a sufficient reward and see whether they will not play the Judas Now they seem peaceable humble men but touch them in their self-interest cross them in their commodity or reputation by an injury yea or by justice or necessary reproof and then see what they will prove O that the Devil could not truly boast of thousands that by a few foul words or by crossing their self-willedness he can make them speak evil of their neighbours and fill them with malice and bitterness against their truest friends Oh where are the men that maintain their Love and Meekness and Concord any longer than they are pleased and their wills and interests are complyed with or not much contradicted Besides what I have more largely spoken of this master common sin in the following Discourse take notice here of a few of the discoveries of it 1. Observe but the striving that there is for Command and Dignity and Riches and this even among Professors
changed in the point of Baptism and these are greatly offended with me for dissenting and giving the Reasons of my dissent what uncharitable dealings some of them have been guilty of I shall not now express Some of them have turned to one opinion and some to another and almost all that make these turns have left their Charity behind them Some of them take up new Causes in the Common-wealth and these are as angry with me as the rest because I cannot follow them in their Changes How many waies hath a man to lose a selfish friend I was once beloved by all these men and now I am either hated or lookt at as a stranger at least when I am where I was when I had their Love If I know my heart I speak not this in any great sense of the loss of my own interest but in the sense of the lamentable Power and Prevalency of self-Self-love and Self-conceitedness in the world And while I am bitterly censured by almost every party how easily could I recover my interest and reputation with any one of them if I could but be of their mind and side How wise and how honest a man could I be with the Anabaptists if I would but be Rebaptized and turn to them And how much should I be valued by the Papists if I would turn to them The like I may say of all the other fore-named parties For every one of them have by word or writing signified so much to me Even the Grotian Prelatists would wipe their mouths and speak me fairer if I could turn to them Mr. Pierce himself that hath exceeded all men in his late Book abounding with visible falâ—hoods and unchristian abuse of the servants of the Lord whom he calleth Puritans yet telleth me page 212. We contend for your fellowship and daily pray for your coming in if you by name should have occasion to pass this way and present your self with other guests at the holy Supper of our Lord no man on earth should be more welcome but if you and your partners will continue your several separations and shut your selves out from our Communion as it were judging your selves unworthy of the Kingdom of God and excommunicating your selves c. See here the power of Selfishness A man that is painted out as Lazie a Reader a Proud Hypocrite and much more should be as welcome as any man on earth if he will but have communion with them in their way how much more if he were but of their party This would cure Hypocrisie Pride and all these crimes And till we can comply with them we Excommunicate our selves and judge our selves unworthy of the Kingdom of God He that thinks Bishops should not be as now Diocesan and undertake many hundred Parishes and then feed and govern them by others and he that submits not to their mode in a Surplice or some form of Prayer doth therefore judge himself unworthy of the Kingdom of God as if Gods Kingdom were confined to them and lay in meats and drinks and not in Righteousness and Peace And as if we continued in an excommunication of our selves because we are not of their party when yet we deny no Protestants to be our Brethren nor refuse local Communion with them so they will grant it us on Scripture-terms which if they will not we will yet hold communion with them in several Congregations But thus it appeareth how strong self-interest is in the world and how charitable men are to those of their own opinions or parties and how easily many do take liberty to speak their pleasure against any that are not of their mind 8. Observe also how forward men are to Teach and how backward to be Learners and then judge of their Self-denial Why are so many unwilling to enter by the way of Ordination but too commonly because they judge better of their Own abilities than Ordainers do and therefore suspect that they may be rejected by the Ordainers or disgraced at the least while they think highly of themselves But if they were self-denying men they would think the sober faithful Pastors much fitter Judges of their abilities than themselves and would not run before they are sent Many that reproach the Ministers as deceivers will needs be themselves the Teachers of the people As if they should say We silly ignorant souls are wiser and fitter to be Teachers than you come down and let us take your places In conference you may observe that most are forwarder to speak than to hear which shews that they over-value their own understandings And so much are Proud men delighted to be thought the Oracles of the world that if you will but seem to hearken to them and learn of them and yield to their Opinions you win their hearts and shall be the men that have their commendations Insomuch that some late ambitious persons that have thought to rise by the art of dissimulation have found that there is no way for the deceiving of the people and procuring the good will of most like this even to seem to be of every mans opinion that they talk with and to make every Sect and Party believe that they are their friends and of their mind Especially if you will seem to be changed by their arguments and give them the glory of your convictions and illuminations you will then be the dearly beloved of their hearts In all this you may see the rarity of self-denial Yea in the very work of God too many of the most zealous godly Ministers that have been the instruments of converting many souls are toucht a little with the temptation to this selfishness looking too much to their own part in the work 9. Observe but how commonly with men called Christians the interest of Christ is trodden in the dirt when it seemeth to cross any interest of their own An Argument drawn from the commands of God or the necessity of the Church or of the souls of men seems nothing to them if their Honour or Gain or Greatness or safety do stand up against it and be inconsistent with its conclusion Hence it is that the souls of Hypocrites do cheat themselves by a Carnal Religiousness serving God only in subserviency to themselves Hence it is that Hypocrites do most shew themselves in matters of self-interest In the cheap part of Religion they seem to be as good as any as zealous for their party and opinions which they call the Truth and as long and loud in prayer and for as strict a way of Discipline with others But touch them in their Estates or Names Call them to costly works of Charity or to let go their right for peace or publick good or to confess and lament any sin that they commit and you shall then see that they are but common men and Self bears rule instead of Christ Hence also it is that so many persons can bear with themselves in any calling or trade of life
in your confusion You have seen of late years in this Land the Glory of Self-seekers turned to shame But it 's greater shame that 's out of sight The word and works of God have warned you If yet the Cause and Church of God shall be neglected and your selves and your own affairs preferred and men that shall not be tolerated to abuse you shall be Tolerated to abuse the souls of men and the Lord that made them and if God must be denyed because you will not deny your selves you shall be denyed by Christ in your great extremity when the remembrance of these things shall be your torment Hearken and Amend or prepare your answer for behold the Judge is at the door THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. OF the Nature of selfishness as opposite to God invading his prerogative in ten particulars Page 1 CHAP. II. Reasons of the Necessity of Self-denial p. 26 CHAP. III. Use 1. A general complaint of the prevalency of selfishness p. 33 CHAP. IV. The prevalency of selfishness in all Relations p. 40 CHAP. V. The power of selfishness upon mens opinions in Religion p. 49. CHAP. VI. Mens great aversness to costly or troublesom Duties p. 52 CHAP. VII Mens tenderness of Self in cases of any suffering p. 60 CHAP. VIII The partiality of mens Judgement in their Own cases p. 62 CHAP. IX The great power and prevalency of self discovered p. 70 CHAP. X. Consectaries 1. This evinceth the fall of man and Original corruption 2. It tells us what to expect from men and gives us the truest Prognostick of affairs so far as the will of man determineth them 3. It warranteth a moderate incredulity and jealousie of man 4. It callethâ—us to be jealous of our selâ—es p. 77 CHAP. XI Use 2. To try our self-denial Whether it be sincere p. 79 CHAP. XII Exercise Self-denial Ten Cases in which Self must be denied p. 83 CHAP. XIII 1. Selfish Dispositions to be denied And 1. Self-love p. 88 CHAP. XIV 2. Self-conceitedness must be denied p. 93 CHAP. XV. Self-will must be denied p. 108 CHAP. XVI Selfish passions to be denied p. 119 CHAP. XVII Self-imaginations to be denied p. 123 CHAP. XVIII Inordinate appetite to be denied p. 125 CHAP. XIX II. Self-interest to be denied And I. Pleasure And 1. That of the Taste p. 134 Lustful pleasures to be denied p. 140 CHAP. XX. 3. Wanton talk Love-songs c. to he denied 142 CHAP. XXI 4. Idle and worldly talk to be denied p. 147 CAP. XXII 5. False stories Romances and other idle tempting books p. 157 CHAP. XXIII 6. Vain sports and past-times to be denied p. 159 CHAP. XXIV 7. Vain and sinful company to be denied p. 166 CHAP. XXV 8. Pleasing accommodations Houses Gardens Horses c. 168 CHAP. XXVI 9. Self-denial in Apparel needful p. 174 CHA. XXVII 10. Self-denial against Ease and Idleness and worldly peace p. 182 CHAP. XXVIII 11. Delight in worldly Prosperity to be denied p. 191 CHAP. XXIX 12. Children and Relationshow to be denied p. 195 CHAP. XXX 13. Revengeful passions to be denied p. 203 CHAP. XXXI 14. Useless History and News to be denied p. 205 CHAP. XXXII 15. Unnecessary knowledge and delight therein to be denyed p. 208 CHAP. XXXIII 16. Afactious desire of the success of our Own opinions and the thriving of our own parties as such to be denied p. 214 CHAP. XXXIV 17. Carnal Liberty to be denied There is an Holy Liberty which none must deny And a wicked Liberty which none must desire And an indifferent Liberty How far this must be denied p. 218 CHAP. XXXV 18. Our Native Countrey and Habitations to be dâ—nied p. 227 CHAP. XXXVI 19. Bodily Health and Ease from pains p. 229 CHAP. XXXVII 20. Natural life to be denied p. 237 CHAP. XXXVIII Twenty Reasons to move us to deny our Lives and yield to violent or natural death with comfortable submission when God requireth it p. 243 CHAP. XXXIX An answer to such Doubts as are raised by the fears of death p. 273 CHAP. XL. Directions to procure a willingness to die p. 276 CHAP. XLI Self-denial in Point of Honour and Pride And 1. Of climbing into dignities or high places p. 285 CHAP. XLII 2. The Love and commendations of others to be denied p. 291 CHAP. XLIII 3. The Reputation of Wealth to be denied p. 293 CHAP. XLIV 4. Comeliness and Beauty to be denied p. 294 CHAP. XLV 5. Strength and Valour to be denied p. 296 CHAP. XLVI 6. Wisdom and Learning to be denied p. 297 CHAP. XLVII 7. Reputation of Spiritual Gifts and Abilities to be denied p. 299 CHAP. XLVIII 8. The reputation of being Orthodox how to be denyed p. 306 CHAP. XLIX 9. The Reputation of Godliness and Honesty how to be denied p. 309 CHAP. L. 10. A Renowned perpetuated Name to be denied p. 313 CHAP. LI. Q. 1. Whether self-denial consist in renouncing propriety p. 331 CHAP. LII Q. 2. Whether it consist in renouncing Marriage p. 333 CHAP. LIII Q. 3. Whether it lie in solitude and renouncing secular affairs p. 335 CHAP. LIV. Q. 4. Or in renouncing publick Offices and Honours p. 336 CHAP. LV. Q. 5. Or in denying our Relations p. 338 CHAP. LVI Q. 6. Whether self-denial require us to give more to Godly Strangers than to kindred that are ungodly p. 340 CHAP. LVII Q. 7. How we must Love our neighbours as our selves p. 343 CHAP. LVIII Q. 8. What pennance or self-revenge it requireth p. 344 CHAP. LIX Q. 9. Must all Passion be denied p. 345 CHAP. LX. Q. 10. How far must we deny our Reason p. 346 CHAP. LXI Q. 11. How far must we be content with Gods afflicting will c. p. 347 CHAP. LXII Q. 12. May God be finally loved as our felicity and portion for our selves p. 349 CHAP. LXIII Motives to self-denial 1. Selfishness is the grand Idolatry p. 353 CHAP. LXIV 2. It 's the enemy of all Moral good p. 356 CHAP. LXV 3. It 's contrary to the state of holiness and happiness p. 365 CHAP. LXVI 4. Self-seeking is self-losing Self-denial is our safety p. 368 CHAP. LXVII 5. It 's the powerful enemy of all Ordinances p. 373 CHAP. LXVIII 6. It 's the enemy of all Societies and Relations and common good p. 380 CHAP. LXIX 7. It Corrupteth and debaseth all that it disposeth of p. 300 CHAP. LXX 8. Deny Self or you will deny Christ p. 394 CHAP. LXXI 9. The selfish deal worse with God than with the Devil p. 396 CHAP. LXXII It 's the heaviest plague to be left to our selves p. 398 CHAP. LXXIII Ten Directions to get Self-denial p. 400 The Conclusion p. 411 LUKE 9. 23 24. And he said to them all If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his Cross daily and follow me For whosoever will save his life shall lose it but whosoever will lose his life for my sake the same shall save it CHAP. I. What Selfishness and Self-denyal are at
them yea or that would not step out of their way for it and wound their Consciences and hazard all their hopes of Heaven for it if they found themselves in a likelyhood of obtaining it because where self doth raign at home it would raign also over all others Nothing more pleaseth the Carnal mind than to have his will and to have all men do what he would have them and to see all at his beck and each man seeking to know his Pleasure ready to receive his word for Law This is the reign of self But sanctification teaching men self-denyal doth make them look fist at the Doing of Gods will and would have all the world obedient to that and for their own wills they resign them absolutely to Gods and would not have men obey them but in a due subordination to the Lord. As they affect no Dominion or Government but for God so they desire not men to obey their wills any further than it is necessary to the obedience of Gods will to which they are serviceable and conform The self-denying sanctified man hath as careful an eye up and down the world for Gods interest as the self-seeker hath for his own And as eagerly doth he long to hear of the setting up of the Name and Kingdom and Will or Laws of God in the world as the ambitious man longs for the setting up of his own And it as much rejoyceth the holy self-denying man to hear that Gods Laws are set up and obeyed and that the world doth stoop to Jesus Christ as it would rejoyce the Carnal selfish wretch to be the Lord and Master of all himself and his will become the Law of the world An Holy self-denying man would be far gladder to hear that Africa America and the rest of the unbelieving part of the world were Converted to Christ by the power of the Gospel and that the Heathens were his inheritance and the Kingdoms of the world become the Kingdoms of Christ than if he had Conquered all these himself and were become the King or Emperour of the world For as self is the chief interest of an unsanctified man so Christ and the will of God is the chief Interest of the sanctified for the hath destroyed the contradictory Interest of self and renounced it and hath taken God for his End and Christ for the Way and consequently for his highest Interest so that he hath now no business in the world but Gods business he hath no honour to regard but Gods honour he hath none to exalt but the King of Kings he knows no gain but the pleasing of God he knows no content or pleasure but Gods pleasure for the life that he now lives in the flesh he lives by faith of the Son of God that hath loved him and given himself for him and thereby hath drawn him out of himself to the Fountain and End of Love and so it is not he that lives but Christ liveth in him Gal. 2. 20. 10. Lastly it is the high Prerogative of God to have the honour and Power and Glory ascribed to him and be praised as the author of all Good to the world and his Glory he will not give to another Man and all things are Created and preserved and ordered for his Glory Nor shall man have any Glory but in the Glorifying of his Lord when we fell short of Glorifying the Lord we also fell short of the Glory which we expected by him But when sin turned man from God to himself he became regardless of the honour of God and his mind was bent on his own Honour so that he would have every knee bow to himself and every eye observe him and every mind think highly of him and every tongue to praise and magnifie him It doth him good at the heart to have vertue and wisdom and greatness ascribed to him and an excellency in all and to have all the good that is done ascribed to him and to be taken to be as the Sun in the firmament that all must eye and none can live without and to be esteemed the benefactor of all When he hears that men extol him and speak nothing of him but well and great things and when he sees them all observe and reverence him and take him as an Oracle for wisdom or as an Angel of God O how this pleaseth his unsanctified selfish mind Now he hath his End even that which he would have and verily saith Christ they have their reward But when Sanctification hath taught men to deny themselves they see then that they are vile and miserable sinners and loath themselves for all their abominations and are base in their own eyes and humble themselves before the Lord and abhor themselves in dust and ashes and say To us belongeth shame and confusion of face Not unto us O Lord not unto us but to thy Name give the glory Psal 115. 1. Dan. 9. 7 8. The holy self-denying soul desireth no glory and honour but what may conduce to the glory and honour of his Lord His heart riseth against base flattering worldlings that would rob God and give the honour to him nor can they do him a greater displeasure than to ascribe that to him belongeth only to God or to bring to him or any Creature his Makers due If God be honoured he takes himself as honoured if he be never so low If God be dishonoured he is troubled and his own honour will not make him reparation As he liveth himself to the glory of God and doth all that he doth in the world to that end so would he have others do so too And if God be most honoured by his disgrace and shame he can submit And thus I have shewed you the true Nature both of selfishness and of self-denyal But observe that I describe it as it is in it self but yet there is too much selfishness in the best which may hinder the fulness of these effects But self-denyal is predominant in all the sanctified though it be not perfect CHAP. II. Reasons of the Necessity of Self-denyal to salvation III. ANd now you have seen the Description of self-denyal and I hope if you have studyed it you know what it is that is required I shall next shew you some of the Reasons of its Necessity and prove it to you beyond dispute that it is no indifferent thing nor the high attainment of some few of the Saints but a thing that all must have that will be saved being of the very essence of holiness it self so that it is as possible to live without life as to be Holy without self-denyal and as possible to be saved whether God will or no as to be saved without self-denyal in a predominant degree And if any of you thing strange that salvation should be laid on so high a duty and that no man can be a true Disciple that denyeth not himself even to the forsaking of his Life and all when God requireth it
I shall shew you that Reason that should easily satisfie you Reas 1. Till a man Deny himself he denyeth God and doth not indeed believe in him and love him and take him to be his God And I hope you will grant that no man can be saved that believes not in God nor Loveth him nor takes him for his God He that will deny God and yet think to be saved must think to be saved in despight of God The first Article of our faith and of our Baptismal Christian Covenant is to Believe in God the Father and take him for our God and give up our selves to be his people But this no man can do without self-denyal For by all that I have said in the description of it you may see that selfishness is most contrary to God and would rob him of all his high Prerogatives and God should be no God if the selfish sinner had his will and he doth not heartily consent that he shall be God to him I have formerly told you that self is the God of wicked men or the worlds great Idol And that the inordinate Love of Pleasure Profits and Honour in Trinity is all but this self love in Unity and that in the Malignant Trinity of Gods enemies the flesh is the first and foundation the world the second and the Devil the third Every man is an Idolater so far as he is selfish God is not a bare name He that takes away his Essence or Attributes and Prerogatives and yet thinks he believeth in him because he leaveth him his name and Titles doth as bad as they that set up an Image and worship that instead of God or that worship the Sun or Moon as Gods because they somewhat represent his Glory for sure a bare Name hath as little substance as an Image much less can you say it hath more than the Sun Now selfish ungodly men do all of them rob God and give his honour and prerogatives to themselves and put him off with empty Titles They call him their God but will not have him for their End their Portion and Felicity nor give him the strongest Love of their hearts They will not take him as their Absolute Owner and devote themselves and all they have to him and stand with a willing mind to his Dispose They will not take him for their Soveraign and be Ruled by him nor deny themselves for him nor seek his honour and interest above their own They call him their Father but deny him his honour and their Master but give him not his fear Mal. 1. 6. They depend not on his hand and live not by his Law and to his Glory and therefore they do not take him for their God And can you expect that God should save those that deny him and would dethrone him that is his very enemies Reas 2. Yea more than so God will not save those that make themselves their own Gods when they have rejected him But all these unsanctified selfish men do make themselves their own Gods for in all the ten particulars before mentioned they take to themselves the Prerogatives of God 1. They would be their own End and looâ—… further 2. They use all Creatures but as means to 〈…〉 End yea God himself is esteemed but for themselves 3. They Love their present Life and Prosperity better than God 4. They would be their own and live as their own and not as those that are none of their own 5. They would have the Creatures to be their 〈…〉 them as their Own and not as God's ◠〈…〉 â—â—st care for themselves and shift for themselves â—…t themselves wholly upon God 7. They would dispose of themselves and their own conditions and of all things else 8. They would Rule themselves and be from under the Laws and Government of God 9. They would be the Rulers of all others and have all men do their wills 10. And they would be honoured and admired by all and have the praise ascribed to them And if all this be not to set up themselves as Gods or Idols in the world I know not what is Certainly God is so far from having a thought of saving such vile Idolaters in this Condition that they are the principal objects of his high displeasure and the fairest Marks for his Justice to shoot at and he is engaged to pull them down and tread them into hell should God stand by and see a company of rebellious sinners sit down in his Throne or usurp his Soveraignty and Divine Prerogatives and let them alone yea and advance them to his Glory No he hath resolved that he that humbleth himself shall be exalted and he that exalted himself shall be brought low And what higher self-exaltation can there be than to make ourselves as gods to our selves And therefore who should be brought lower than such Reas 3. No man can be a Christian that takes not Christ for his Lord and Saviour But no man without this self-denyal can take Christ for his Lord and Saviour and therefore no man without self-denyal can be a Christian and so be saved He that makes himself his End cannot make Christ as Christ his way for Christ is the way to the Father and not to Carnalself Nay the business that Christ came upon into the world was to pull down and subdue this self Moreover whoever taketh Christ for his Saviour must know from what it is that he must save him and that is principally from self And no man can take Christ for his Saviour that renounceth not self-confidence and is not willing to be saved from the Idolatry of self-exaltation No man can take Christ for his Master or Teacher that comes not into his school as a little child renouncing the guidance of Carnal-self and sensible of his need of an heavenly Teacher No man can take Christ for his King and Lord and give up himself to him as his own and as his Subject that hath not learned to deny that self that claims propriety and soveraignty in his stead There is no Antichrist nor false Christ that ever was in the world that doth more truly oppose Christ and resist him in all the parts of his office than Carnal self It is this that will not stoop to his Righteousness or to his Guidance and to his teaching and holy Government Self is the false Christ or Saviour of the world as well as the false God And therefore there can be no salvation where self is not denyed and taken down Reas 4. He that believeth not in the Holy Ghost and taketh him not for his Sanctifier cannot be a true Christian or be saved But no man without this self-denyal believeth in the Holy Ghost and taketh him for his Sanctifier And therefore without this Self-denyal no man can be a true Christian or be saved The very nature of sanctification consisteth in the turning a man from himself to God in destroying selfishness and devoting the soul to God
a servant or child reproach his Master or Parent or call them all to naught and they think not fit to put up that nor indeed is it but let them swear by the name of God or break his Laws and they can patiently bear with it and a cold rebuke like Eli's will serve turn They can get them into field or shop to work together but they cannot get them before and after to prayer together And why is all this Why one is for Self and the other is for God One is for the body and the other is for the soul So that you see what Self can do and how commonly it is the master of Families Towns and Countries because it is the master in mens souls God must be loved above all and our neighbour as our selves But if God were allowed but so much love as a very neighbour should have it would not be all so ill with the selfish world as now it is But because I have been so long on this first discovery of the power of Self and the scarcity of Self-denyal I will be shorter in the rest that follow CHAP. V. The power of Selfishness upon mens opinions in Religion 2. ANother instance Discovering the Reign of selfishness in the world is The great Power that it hath to form mens Opinions and Conceptions in Religion Though the understanding naturally be inclined to Truth yet a selfish by as upon the soul especially on the will doth commonly delude it and make the vilest error seem to be Truth to it and the most useful Truth to seem an error The Will hath much command over the Understanding and when selfishness is become the very habit the byas the nature of the will you may easily conjecture how it will pervert the understanding But what need we more than experience to satisfie us Do you not see that where self is but deeply engaged the judgement is bribed or overmastered and carried from the Truth So that as the eye that looks through a coloured glass doth see all things as if they were of the same colour as the glass So the understanding that is mastered by a selfish inclination thinks every thing is truth that savoureth his self-interest And here I shall offer you some more particular instances 1 We all see that almost all the world is of that Religion or Opinion which hath the countenance of the Government that they live under and the persons that have greatest power on their reputation or at least which is consistent with their safety if not rising and prosperity in the world The Turks are commonly Mahometans the subjects of Rome and Spain and Austria c. are generally Papists those in Denmark Sweden Saxony c. are generally Lutherans those of Scotland England Helvetia c. are commonly Calvinists as they are called I know the power of education is great and hearing evidence only on one side may byas a well meaning man But Papists and Protestants as to the learned part have the Books of the contrary-minded at hand And therefore that Opinions should run in a stream and whole Countreys almost be of a party must needs be much from the power of selfishness because they are swayed by them that have the power of their reputation and estates and liberties in the world 2. Moreover when a man is by custome grown self-conceited or by the power of Pride is wise in his own eyes how hard a matter do we find it to convince such men by the clearest evidence They will not see when they can hardly wink so close as to keep out the light It is their opinion and therefore shall be so and they will hold it because it is their own 3. Especially if it be an Opinion of a mans own invention which is doubly his own both as he is the contriver and possessor how close will he stick to it too commonly beyond the evidence of truth because that self hath so greâ—â—â—n interest in it 4. Yea if a man be but deeply engaged for it either by laborious Disputes or confident owning it or any way so as that his credit lyeth on it how tenacious will he be of it because of the powerful interest of Self 5. And if it be but an Opinion that seems to befriend any former Opinion that we have much engaged for how much doth selfishness usually appear in our inordinate propensity to it 6. Also if we live in dayes of persecution how easily do we receive those Opinions that would keep us from prison and fire Or if any suffering lye upon it we commonly take that side to be right that is safest to the flesh except when self would be advanced by the occasion of sufferings And in prosperity if there be any controversie arise which our gain is concerned in how easily believe we the thriving opinion If any Oath Engagement or Duty be imposed on us by those that have Power to do us harm the generality are for it be it what it will In all these cases it is commonly Carnal Self that is the Judge And how far Self commands in such cases you may see by these discoveries following 1. In studying the case mens thoughts run almost all one way They study what to say for their own opinions and how to answer all that is against them but they study but very little what may be saâ—d on the other side They sit at their studies with a byassed will inclining or commanding their understanding what to do even to prove that to be true which they would have â—o be true whether it be so or not 2. And hence it is that the weakest Arguments on their own side do seem sufficient if not invincible and they stand wondering at the blindness of all those men that cannot see the force of them But no Arguments seem to have any weight that are brought against them And all this is from the power of self 3. Yea sometimes when they are silenced and know not what to say for their opinions nor how to answer the Arguments for the contrary yet they can say We are of this mind and we will be of this mind And why but because it is espoused to them and their own 4. And hence it is that if a man be but an admirer of us or of our own opinion in other things we are readier to receive an opinion from him than from another 5. And hence it is that Disputations do so sâ—ldome change mens minds because they take it to be a dishonour to be changed by another unless it be a person of great renown we envy to an Opposite the glory of altering our understandings But if we may have the doing of it our selves by the power of our own understandings and studies we will sometimes yield to change our minds He is a stranger to the ungodly world that seeth not how much self-interest doth to master their understandings and turn their hearts from the holy
else they can never scape it yet they had rather venture on Hell than hear the danger And as a sortish Patient they love that Physitian better that will tell them there is no danger and let them dye than he that will tell them your discase is dangerous you must bleed or vomit or purge or you will dye O what a wrong they take it to be told thus If a Minister tell one of them that hath the death marks of ungodliness in the face of his Conversation Neighbour I must deal plainly with you your state is sad you are unsanctified and unjustified and in the slavery of the Devil and will be lost for ever if you dye before you are converted and made a new creature and therefore turn presently as you love your soul its ten to one but he should have a reproachful answer instead of thanks and obedience And all this shews that self bears the rule I will give one instance from the Gospel that will tell you plainly the power of self In Luke 4. 20. c. you read of an excellent Sermon preached by Jesus Christ himself so that all did wonder at his gracious words yet few were converted by it but they fell on cavilling against him because of his supposed Parentage and Breeding Whereupon Christ telleth them that Elias and Elisha though most excellent Prophets were sent but for the sake of a few and therefore it was no wonder if of all that multitude it was but a few that should be converted and saved by him This very doctrine so netled these wretches that the Text saith ver 28 29. that all they in the Synagogue when they heard these things were filled with wrath and rose up and thrust him out of the City and led him to the brow of the hill whereon their City was built that they might cast him down headlong See what entertainment such doctrine had even from Christ himself As if they should have said what are we all unconverted and ungodly shall none be saved but a few such as you Self was not able to bear this doctrine they would have had his life for it 7. Again let but a Minister or private Christian deal closely with ungodly men or Hypocrites about their particular sins by private reproof and see whether Self be not Lord and King in them O how scurvily they will look at you and their hearts do presently rise against you with displeasure and they meet you with distaste and passion and plead for their sins or at least excuse or extenuate them or bethink themselves what they may hit you in the teeth with of your own Or if malice it self can fasten nothing on you they let fly at professors or those that they think are of your mind and way in a word they shew you that they take it not well that you meddle with them and let not their sin alone and look to your selves for all that God hath expresly commanded us Lev. 19. 17. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour and not suffer sin upon him And Heb. 3. 13. Exhort one another daily while it is called to day lest any be hardned by the deceitfulness of sin So Mat. 18. 15 16. Try but plain dealing with your neighbours one twelve moneth with as much prudence and love and lenity as will stand with faithfulness and when you have done I dare leave it to your selves to judge whether God or self have the more servants in the world and whether self-denyal and Sanctification be not very rare 8. Yet further you see it is the duty of Christians to admonish and faithfully reprove one another but because most men take it ill and plain dealing will displease and lose a friend how few even of professors will be brought to perform it yea of those that expect a Minister should reject the offendor when it cannot be done till after admonition and impenitency thereupon No this is a troublesome duty and self will not give them leave to do it 9. Moreover You know that Church-Government and Discipline is an undoubted Ordinance of Christ which the Church hath owned in every age though in the execution some have been negligent and some injurious and that open scandalous sins must have open confession and repentance that the ill effects may be hindered or healed and the Church see that the person is capable of their communion and that the absolution may be open and well grounded And yet let any man except the truly penitent and godly be called after a scandal to such a necessary confession and how hardly are they brought to it What cavilling shall you have against the duty They will not believe that it is their duty not they And why so is it because it is not plainly required by God No but because it tends they think to their disgrace and self is against it and when you have shewed them such reasons for it that they cannot answer yet the sum is they will not believe it or if they believe it they will not do it What! will they make themselves the laughing stock and talk of the Countrey No they will never do it and it is an injury they think for God or man to put them upon it God commands and self forbids God bids them yield lest they perish in impenitency self bids them not to yield lest they shame themselves before men God perswadeth and self disswadeth and which is it that most commonly prevails Though to avoid the shame of excommunication self also will some time make them yield Did but the Magistrate by a penalty of ten or twenty pound upon refusers perswade them to this not one of a hundred would then refuse but when God urgeth them with the threatning of Hell the wages of impenitency they make little or nothing of it as if they could escape it by not believing it or some way or other could deal well enough with him Judge by the performance of this one duty Whether God or Self have more Disciples 10. Lastly let me instance in one duty more Suppose a deceitful Tradesman or oppressing Land-lord or any one that gets unlawfully from another is told from the word of God that it is his duty to make Restitution either to the person or to his posterity or to God by the poor if neither can be done and to give back all that ever he thus unjustly came by though he have been possessed of it without disgrace never so long See what entertainment this doctrine will have with the most Self will not lose the prey that it hath got hold off till death shall wring it out of its jaws and Hell make them wish they had never medled with it or else had penitently and voluntarily restored it O what abundance of objections hath self against it and no answer will satisfie from God or man Of a thousand unjust getters how many do restore
it were estrangeth him from himself that he may have communion with God and this makes him vile in his own eyes and abhor himself in dust and ashes He is lost in himself and seeking God he finds himself again in God It is not a Stoical Resolution but the Love of God and the Hopes of Glory that make him throw away the world and look contemptuously on all below so far as they are meer provision for the flesh Search now and try your hearts by these evidences whether you are possessed of this necessary grace of self-denial O make not light of the matter Sirs and presume not of it till you find good grounds For I must tell you that self is the most treacherous enemy and the most insinuating deceiver in the world It will be within you when you are not aware of it and will conquer you when you perceive not your selves much troubled with it and of all other vices is both the hardest to find out and the hardest to cast out the hardest to discover and the hardest to cure Be sure therefore in the first place that you have self-denial and then be sure that you use it and live in the practice of it And for this I must give you more particular advice CHAP. XII In what respect self must be denyed II. AND here I beseech you take heed of Self in all these following respects 1. You must Deny Self as it is Opposite to God and a Competitor with him and the Idol of the soul and of the world and this is in all the ten respects which I mentioned in the beginning and therefore shall not now rehearse And this is the principal part of self-denial 2. Self must be denyed as it is but conceived as separated from God and would be an End in a divided sense from God For our selves and all things else are created contingent dependent beings and must not be once thought of as if we were either our own beginning or end or in any capacity but subservient unto God Self becomes a Satan when it would cast off its due subordination to God and would be any other than the workmanship of God depending on him and ruled by him and living to him loving him desiring him and seeking after him and either mourning when we miss him or rejoycing when we find Communion with him 3. Self must be denyed as it stands up against the Truth of the Gospel and blindly and proudly quarrelleth with that word which faith relyeth upon for Justification and salvation Carnal self is both the most incompetent Judge of the word of God and of spiritual affairs and also the most forward and arrogant and audacious for all it is so incompetent And this is the damnable fountain of unbelief That self is an incompetent Judge of the word and waies of God is evident for 1. It is a natural enemy to them and an enemy is no competent Judge Rom. 8. 7. Because the Carnal mind is enmity against God for it is not subject to the Law of God neither indeed can be Deny therefore this enemy the power of judging the word of God Ill-will never saith well Enmity is credulous of all evil and overlooks the good and is accompanyed with false surmises and wresteth every word and suspecteth or maketh an evil sence where there was none there is not a worse expositor in the world And therefore no wonder if such a nature of enmity can find matter of quarrel with the very Scripture it self and with an holy life yea with God himself for it is him especially that the enmity is against 2. Moreover self is a party and therefore an incompetent judge It is self that the Scripture principally speaks against All over the Gospel there are the words of disgrace and the arrows of death directed against the very heart of Carnal self God there proclaimeth and manageth an open war against it And shall a party be the judge shall the traiterous delinquent be the judge A child will hardly speak well of the rod whatever he do by the Corrector but it 's not to be expected that a thief should love the halter or the gallows Gods word is the weapon that self must be slain by and therefore self is an incompetent judge of it 3. Moreover self is quite blind in the matters of God the natural man discerneth them not nor can do because they are spiritually discerned 1 Cor. 2. 14. And the ignorant and blind are incompetent judges 4. And the selfish man is no good student in the Laws of God even when he readeth the letter he doth not mind or savour the spirit of them Rom. 8. 5. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh but they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit A fair world it would be if every Colliar should judge the Privy Council and the Judges of the Land or if every thief should sit upon his accuser and his Judge and every traitor should judge the Prince And a thousand-fold more insufficient is self to judge the Word of God And yet as insufficient as it is it is exceeding arrogant and steps up into the judgment-seat at every Chapter that is read or heard and if this blind and malicious Judge be unsatisfied forsooth the Scripture must be dark or contradictory or what he pleases This horrible presumptuous arrogancy of self is it that hath opened so many mouths against the blessed Doctrine of Salvation and made so many wretched Apostates in the world and cast so many others into doubtings of that word by which at last they must be judged and which should have been the ground of their faith and hope 4. Moreover self must be denyed as it stands up against the Lord Jesus Christ When Christ is presented in his wonderful Condescension in his Incarnation and mean despised life and in his ignominious death Proud self is offended at so low a Saviour and disdaineth that Humiliation which his own necessities did require and despiseth Christ because he became despised and a man of sorrows in our stead When he is propounded as the remedy of a miserable soul and as our only Life and Righteousness and Hope Self doth seduce the soul to undervalue him It will not easily be convinc'd of so much misery as to need such a remedy it is too well to value such a Physician it is too righteous to value the righteousness of a Mediator It hath too much Life and Hope at home in its own supposed innocency or sufficiency to set much by the Hopes that Christ hath purchased and to Live in him O down with self that Christ may be Christ to you How shall he come in while Self is the Porter that keeps the door How shall he pardon you when Self will not suffer you to feel the want and worth of pardon How shall he bind up your hearts when Self will not suffer them to be broken
not principally to please your own fancy and carnal mind but for the enabling you the better and more chearfully to serve God Nothing but God may be loved for it self When the Pleasing of the flesh and fancy is the utmost thing we look at in any of our desires they are wicked and idolatrous Our houses therefore must be fitted to Necessary uses and not to inordinate delights Our Gardens Orchards Walks and such like must be first suited to Necessity and then to so much Delight as is useful to us for the promoting of our holiness but not to any useless tempting Delight But worldlings and sensual persons will not be tied to these Christian Rules Alas it 's the furthest matter from their minds to make Heaven the End of all their earthly possessions and accommodations They may hypocritically talk of God and of serving him by their estates but really it is the pleasing of a fleshly mind that is the thing which they intend They have more delight in their houses and gardens and lands and cattle than in God and the hopes of life everlasting They desire fair houses that they may be thought to be no mean persons in the world and that they may please their humours that run after creatures for felicity and content I would desire such men to consider these things 1. All these are but the baits of Satan to delight you and entangle your desires and find you work in seeking after them while you neglect far greater matters Can you have while to look so much after superfluities and delights in the world when you have Necessaries yet to look after for your souls Have you not greater things to mind than these which these occasion you to neglect 2. Do you really find that they conduce to your main end even to make you more holy or more serviceable to God Nay do not your own Consciences tell you that they hinder you and cross those ends And yet will go against your experience 3. If you are humble conscionable Christians you feel cause enough already to lament that your love to God and delight in him is no more And yet are you preparing snares for your souls to steal away that little remnant of your affections which you seemed to reserve for God 4. If you have any spark of Grace in you you know that the flesh and the world are your dangerous enemies and you know that the way that the world doth undo men is by ticing them to over-value it over-love it that those that love it most are deepest in a state of condemnation and the less men love it the less they are hurt or endangered by it And do you not know that you are liker to over-love a sumptuous house with gardens orchards and such accommodations than a mean habitation Why should you be such enemies to your own salvation as to make temptations for your selves Have you not temptations enough already Do you deal with those you have so well and overcome them so easily and so constantly as that you have reason to desire more If Christ your General send you upon a hotter service you may go on with courage and expect his help But if you will so glory in your own strength as to run into the hotter battle and call for more and stronger enemies it 's easie to conjecture how you will come off If you are Christians know your selves you know that in the meanest state you are too prone to over-love the world and that under all Gods medicinal afflictions you cannot be so weaned from it as you ought Are you not daily constrained to groan and complain to God under the burden of too much Love of the world and too much delight in worldly things If this be not your case I see not how you can have any sincerity of saving grace And if it be your case will you be so sottiâ—â— and hypocritical as to complain daily to God of your sin in the mean time to love and cherish it to groan under your disease and wilfully eat and drink that which you know doth increase it What will you think of a man that will pray to God to save him from uncleanness and yet will dwell no where but in a Brothel-house What do you better that must needs have the world in the loveliest garb and must needs have house and grounds and all things in that plight as are fittest to entice the heart and then will complain to God that you over-love the world and love him too little To your shame you may speak it when you do it so willfully and cherish the sin which you thus complain of If God call you into a state of fulness and temptations watch the more narrowly over your affections and your practices and use no more of the creatures for your self if you have ten thousand pound a year than if you had but an hundred but do not seek and long for temptations With not for danger unless you were better able to pass through it 4. Remember when your fancies desire such things not only that it is an enemy that desireth them and to please your enemy is not safe for you but also that it 's the way that most have perished by to have the world before them in too pleasing and lovely a condition Remember Nebuchadnezzar's case Dan. 4. 30. that for glorying in his pompous buildings was turned as a mad man among the Beasts Remember the rich mans sad example Luke 12. 20. 16. and think whether it be safe to imitate them If men must perish for loving the creature more than God methinks you should long most for that condition in which the creature appeareth least lovely or is least likely to steal your love from God and in which you may love him and enjoy him most 5. And bethink you how unsuitable it is to your condition to desire sumptuous buildings and enticing accommodations to your flesh Have you not taken God for your portion and Heaven for your home and are you not strangers and pilgrims here and is not God and everlasting glory sufficient for you You profess all this if you profess to be Christians and if you be not you should not profess that you are And what do you begin to repent of your choice must you yet turn to the pomp and vanity of the world again and will you quit your hopes of God and glory Ah poor souls what little need have you of such great matters on earth you have but a little to do with them and but a little while to stay with them and will not a mean habitation and shorter accommodations serve you for so short a time Stay but a while and your souls shall have house-room enough in heaven or hell and a narrow grave of seven foot long will serve your bodies till the resurrection And cannot you make shift with an ordinary habitation and with small common things till then
holiness more abound If so be not too hasty to censure their Zeal But usually all these dividing ways are the diseases of the Church which cause its languishing decay and dissolution 7. Lastly This selfish zeal is commonly censorious and uncharitable and diminisheth Christian Love and sets those a reproaching and despising each other that should have lived in the Union and Communion of Saints Where you find these properties of your zeal and desire for the promoting of your Opinions or parties in Religion you have great reason to make it presently your business to find out that insinuating self which maketh your Religion Carnal and to deny and mortifie it CHAP. XXXIV Carnal Liberty to be denied What. 17. ANother selfish interest to be denied is Carnal Liberty A thing that selfishness hath strangely brought of late into so much credit that abundance among us think they are doing some special service to God their Country the Church and their own souls when they are but deeply engaged for the Devil by a self-seeking spirit in a Carnal Course For the discovery of this dangerous common disease I must first tell you that there is a threefold Liberty which must carefully be differenced 1. There is an Holy Blessed Liberty which no man must deny 2. There is a wicked Liberty which no man should desire 3. And between these two there is a Common Natural and Civil Liberty which is good in its place as other worldly matters are but must be denied when it stands in competition with higher and better things and as all other worldly matters is Holy when it is Holily esteemed and used that is for God but sinful when it is sinfully esteemed and used and that is for Carnal self I. The first of these is not to be denied but all other Liberty to be denied for it This Holy Liberty consisteth in these following Particulars 1. To be freed from the Power of sin which is the disability the deformity the death of the soul 2. From the Guilt of sin and the wrath of God and the Curse of the Law 3. To be restored to God by Christ in Union Reconciliation and Sanctification and our enthralled spirits set free to know and love and serve him and delight in him Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is Libert y 2 Cor. 3. 17. God is the souls freedom who is its Lord and life and end and all 4. To be delivered from Satan as a Deceiver and enemy and executioner of the wrath of God 5. To be freed from that Law or Covenant of Works which requireth that which to us is become impossible 6. To be freed from the burdensome task of useless Ceremonies imposed on the Church in the times of infancy and darkness 7. To be freed from the accusations of a guilty conscience those self-tormentings which in the wicked are the fore-tastes of hell 8. To be freed from such temporal judgments here as might hinder our salvation or our service of God 9. To be free from the condemning sentence at the last day and the everlasting Torments which the wicked must endure 10. And to be delivered into the blessed sight of God and the perfect fruition and pleasing of him in Perfect Love and Joy and Praise to all eternity This is the Liberty which you must not deny which I therefore name that by the way you may see that it is not for nothing that the other sorts of Liberty are to be denied II. The second sort of Liberty is that which is wicked directly evil which all men should deny And this is a freedom from Righteousness as the Apostle calls it Rom. 6. 20. To be free from a voluntary subjection to God and free from his severe and holy Laws and free from the thoughts of holiness and of the life to come and free from those sighs and groans for sin and that godly sorrow which the sanctified undergo and to be free from all those spiritual motions and changing works upon their hearts which the Spirit doth work on all the Saints to be free from holy speeches and holy prayer and other duties and from that strict and holy manner of living which God commandeth to be at liberty to sin against God and to please the flesh and follow their own imaginations and wills let God say what he will to the contrary to be free to eat and drink what we love and have a mind of and to be merry and wanton and lustful and worldly and take our course without being curbed by so precise a Law as God hath given us to be free from an heavenly conversation and those preparations for death and that Communion with God which the Saints partake of This is the wicked Liberty of the world which the worst of carnal men desire And the next beyond this is a Liberty to lie in the fire of hell and a freedom from salvation and from the everlasting Joy and Praises of the Saints If freedom from Grace and Holiness deserve the name of Freedom then you may next call Damnation a Freedom And it is part also of this sinful miserable Liberty to be free from the Government and Officers and good Laws which rule the Church and Commonwealth And such wretches there are in the world that seriously judge it a desirable Liberty to be free from these They think that their Country is Free when every man may do what he list and they have no King or other Governors or none that will look after them and punish their miscarriages And they think the Church is free when they have no Pastors or when Pastors have least power over them and they may do what they list And indeed if they were rid of Magistrates and Ministers they were free As a School is free that hath shut out the Master or have rejected him and teach and rule one another And as a Ship is free when the Master and Pilot are thrown over-board and as an Army is free when they have cast off or lost their commanders or to speak more fitly as an Hospital is free when they are delivered from their Physician and as the madmen in Bedlam are free when they have killed or escaped from their Keepers As Infidels keep their Freedom by refusing Christ in himself so carnal Dividers and Hereticks keep their Freedom by refusing his Officers and Christ in those Officers For he that heareth them heareth him and he that despiseth them despiseth him and he that despiseth despiseth not man but God Luke 10. 16. 1 Thes 4. 8. And another part of this ungodly Liberty is to be free from the exercise at least of this power of Magistrates and Ministers so far as not to be restrained from sin though they be not free from the state of subjects To swear and be drunk and live as most Ale-sellers on the damning sins of others and make a trade of selling men their damnation and to have no Magistrate punish them no
any Creature wise enough to order the world and the affairs thereof Is any Creature powerful enough to dispose of the world and all things in it Is any Creature good enough to do it without the communication of its imperfection which would disorder destroy all I know you make no doubt of any of these things No Creature is fit to be God and therefore none is fit to undertake the work of God And therefore it must be God or none that must have the Disposal of your lives and you But I know what it is that self would have You would have the Disposal of your own lives or else have God to dispose of them as you would have him which comes all to one But how unreasonable is this Would you alone have the Disposal of your own lives or would you have all men else in the world also to have the Disposal of theirs If all should have this Priviledge what a miserable Priviledge would it prove No man then would die and then either you must forbear marriage or what would you do with your posterity when there were no room on earth And then you could not punish a Malefactor with death And what a world would it be if all men were Disposers of themselves when there would be as many different ends and minds as men every man would be for himself and an enemy to others and the world would run every man on his own head and a madder confusion than can be imagined would seize on all If you would have every man have the dispose of his own life you would have as many Gods as Men and so have no God and you would have as many Kings or Rulers as men and so have no Ruler and you would have the world to be no world when God were to them as no God And if you would not have it thus with all what reason have you to desire it for your self What are you more than all the world that you should be exempted from the common state of mortals and be at your own disposal more than they and be instead of God unto your selves 5. You think it neither cruelty or injustice that the lives of bruits should be much at your dispose Your poor fellow-creatures must die when you require it Birds and Beasts and Fishes even multitudes of them must die to feed you yea often for your delight to make you a Feast when you have no necessity The most harmless sheep you will not spare The most laborious Ox the most beautiful Bird must give up their lives to satisfie your pleasure And is not God ten thousand thousand times even infinitely more above you than you are above your fellow-creatures Is one creature fitter to kill another and afterwards devour it and becomes its grave than God to dispose of the Lives of all 6. Where could you wish your Lives to be better than in the hand of the most wise gracious God If you may rest content or have confidence in any it is in him You neednot doubt of his Goodness for he is goodness and Love it self And therefore though you see not the world to come that you are passing to yet as long as you know that you are in the hands of Love it self what cause have you of disquiet or distrust And that you know that he is wise as well as Good and Almighty as well as Wise and therefore as he meaneth you no harm if you are his children so he will not mistake nor fail in the performance You need not fear lest your happiness should miscarry for want of skill in him that is Omniscient or for want of will in him that is your Father or for want of Power in him that is Omnipotent You may far better trust God with your lives than your selves For you have not wisdom enough to know what is best for you nor skill to accomplish it nor Power to go through with it Nay you love not you selves so well as God doth love you Did you but believe this you would better trust him You can trust your selves in a narrow Ship upon â—he wide and raging Seas when you never saw the Country that you are gâ—ing to and all because you believe that the voyage is for your commodity and that you have a skilful Pilot. And cannot you commend your souls into the hand of God to convey you through death to the invisible glory as confidently as you dare commit your lives to the conduct of a man and to a tottering Ship in a hazardous Ocean You can trust your lives on the skill of a Physician And cannot you trust them on the will of God If you had your choice whether your lives should be at your own dispose or Gods you should far rather choose that God might dispose of them than your selves As it is better for an Infant to be guided and disposed of by the Parents than by it self A Good King will not kill his own Subjects needlesly And a natural Father or Mother will not not needlesly kill their own Children yea a very brute will tenderly cherish their young And do you think that God who is infinitely good will causelesly orinjuriously take your lives or that he doth not mean you good even in your death Object But how can I think it for my good to die and to have my nature dissolved Answ Paul did desire to depart or be dissolved and to be with Christ as best of all Phil. 1. 23. And did not he know what was for his good as well as you He was willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord than at home in the body and absent from the Lord and therefore groaned earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with his house which is from heaven that mortality might be swallowed up of life 2 Cor. 5. 1 2 4 6 8. When the Hen hath sate to hatch her young ones they must leave the shell as good for nothing and must come into a world which they never saw before And what of that Should they murmur at the breaking of tâ—â—â—r former habitation or fear the passagâ— inâ—â— so 〈◊〉 â—â— wide so strange a place in 〈…〉 â—f 〈…〉 which they were in before No more 〈…〉 the breaking of these bodies and 〈…〉 the 〈…〉 of flesh and passing under the conduct of Angels into the presence of our Lord. God is but hatching us here by his spirit that he may bring us out into the light of glory And should we grudge at this 7. And what if God call you to sacrifice your lives to him as he called Abraham to sacrifice his Son What if he call you to come to him by a persecutors hand or at least to be willing of your natural death He calls you but to give up a life which you cannot keep and to do that willingly which else you must do whether you will or not Willing or unwilling die you must
earth or from a carrion in a ditch so will our glorified immortal bodies differ from this mortal corruptible flesh If a skilful workman can turn a little earth and ashes into such curious transparent glasses as we daily see and if a little seed that bears no shew of such a thing can produce the more beautiful flowers of the earth and if a little acorn can bring forth the greatest Oak why should we once doubt whether the seed of everlasting life and glory which is now in the blessed souls with Christ can by him communicate a perfection to the flesh that is dissolved into its elements There 's no true beauty but that which is there received from the face of God And if a glympse made Moses face to shine what glory will Gods glory communicate to us when we have the fullest endless intuition of it There only is the strength and there 's the riches and there 's the honour and there 's the pleasure and here are but the shadows and dreams and names and images of these precious things And the perfection of the soul that 's now imperfect will be such as cannot now be known The very nature and manner of Intellection Memory Volition and Affections will be unconceivably altered and elevated even as the soul it self will be and much more because of the change on the corruptible body which in these acts it now makes use of But of these things I have spoke so much in the Saints Rest that I shall say no more of them now but this that in a Believer that expects this blessed change and knows that he shall never till then be perfect there is much unreasonableness in the inordinate unwillingness and fears of death 12. You know that fears and unwillingness can do no good but much increase your suffering and make your death a double death If it be bitter naturally make it not more bitter wilfully I speak this of a violent death for Christ as well as of a natural death For as the one cannot be avoided if we would so the other cannot be avoided when Christ calleth us to it without the loss of our Salvation and therefore it may be called Necessary as well as the other Necessary suffering and death is enough without thâ— addition of unnecessary fears 13. Nay were it but to put an end to the inordinate fears of death even death it self should be the less fearful to us These very fears are troublesome to many an upright soul and should we not desire to be past them As a woman with Child is in fear of the pain danger of her travel but joyful when it 's over so is the true believer himself too oft afraid of the departing hour but death puts an end to all those fears Is it the pain that you fear Why how soon will it be over Is it the strangeness of your souls to God and the place that you are passing to This also will be quickly over and one moment will give you such full acquaintance with the blessed God and the Celestial inhabitants and the world in which you are to live that you will find your self no stranger there but be more joyfully familiar and content than ever you were in the bosom of your dearest friend The Infant in the Womb is a stranger to this lighter open world and all the inhabitants of it and yet it is nor best stay there You can fail for commodity to a Country that you never saw and why cannot you pass with peace and joy to a God a Christ a Heaven that you never saw But yet you are not wholly a stranger there Is it not that God that you have loved and that hath first loved you Have you not been brought into the world by him and lived by him and been preserved and provided for by him and do you not know him Is it not your Father and he that hath given you his Son and his Spirit have you not found an inclination towards him desires after him and some taste of his love and communion with him and yet are you wholly unacquainted with him Know ye not him whom you have loved above all in whom you have trusted and whom you have daily served in the world Who have you lived to but him for whom else have you laid out your time and labour and yet do you not know him And know you not that Christ that hath purposely come down into flesh that you might know him and that hath shewed himself to you in a holy life and bitter death and in abundant precious Gospel mercies and in Sacramental representations that so he might entertain a familiarity with you and infinite distance might not leave you too strange to God Know you not that Spirit that hath made so many a motion to your soul that hath sanctified you and formed the image of God upon you and hath dwelt in you so long and made your hearts his very work-house where he hath been daily doing somewhat for God It is not possible that you should be utterly strange to him that you Live to and Live from and Live in and not know him by whom you know your selves and all things nor see that Light by which you see whatever you see O but you say you never saw him and have no distinct apprehension of his essence Answ What! Would you make a Creature of him that can be limited comprehended or seen with fleshly mortal eyes Take heed of such imaginations It is the understanding that must see him You know that he is most Wise and Good and Great and that he is the Creator and Sustainer and Ruler of the world and that he is your Reconciled Father in Christ and is this no knowledg of him And then the Heaven that you are to go to is it that you are an Heir of where you have laid up your treasure and where your hearts and conversation hath so long been and yet do you not know it You have had many a thought of it and bestowed many a days labour for it and yet do you not know it O but you never saw it for all this Answ It is a spiritual blessedness that flesh and blood can neither enjoy nor see But by the eye of the mind you have often seen at least some glimpse of it You know that it is the present intuition and full fruition of God himself and your glorified Redeemer with his blessed Angels and Saints in perfect Love and Joy and Praise And if you know this you are not altogether strangers to heaven And for the Saints and heavenly Inhabitants you are not wholly strangers to them Some of them you have known in the flesh and others of them you have known in the spirit You are fellow-Citizens with the Saints and of the houshold of God and therefore cannot be utterly unacquainted with them But me thinks the stranger you are to God and to Heaven and to the Saints
That if God deny you even that honour which in the lawfullest manner you desire that you submit to his pleasure and take it patiently and in these two respects you must here deny your selves Above all others these sorts of persons following are in danger of this odious Pride in desiring for themselves an extended and surviving Name 1. Princes and Souldiers that have the management of the great affairs of the world Fain would they be Renowned to Posterity And hence are their aspiring ambitious designs For this are their Wars and Conquests that they may be famous when they are dead as well as while they live And thus they make their Noble Conquests to be but Murders of the vilest sort and worse than any Cut-throats and Robbers by the high way while they intend them but for themselves and their own vain-glory and better might they seek honour by whoredom drunkenness or theft which are far smaller sins Whereas if their wars had been undertaken for God and managed according to his Will they had made them truly honourable and renowned And from this odious Pride it is that Absaloms Pillars must be erected and Monuments must be built to perpetuate their names and tell the world what need they have of means to keep alive their memories and how destitute they are of nobler means when Marbles and Monuments must be the great preservers of their fame Yea it were well if this Pride and selfishness did not corrupt the noblest of their works and turn them into deadly sins if they did not build their Hospitals Colledges or Churches and endow them with Revenues to perpetuate their own Names rather than to do good Though the works themselves are so good and so rare that I would not cast any dishonour upon them seeing all that can be said is too little to provoke men to do the like yet am I bound in duty to tell them that if self should be the End instead of God and Pride the cause instead of charity Hell would be the Reward instead of Heaven so great a matter it is to have an honest heart and right intentions in the most excellent and noble works In so much that a poor man that hath a heart to build a Colledge or an Hospital if he had but means shall be Rewarded by God as if he had done it if God were the End and Charity the Principle when a rich man that doth the work it self shall have but a poor and temporary reward if self be the End and Pride the Principle 2. Another sort that are specially in danger of this sin are all Rich men who would be the great in the world and perpetuate their names and memory in their houses lands and posterity and therefore they would purchase Towns and Lordships that their Houses may be famous when they are gone For it seems a kind of life to them if their Greatness do but live in their posterity Psal 49. 11 12. Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue for ever and their dwelling places to all generations they call their lands after their own names This their way is their folly yet their posterity approve their sayings Hence also is that ostentation of Escucheons and Arms and of Ancient Gentility or Nobility and much more such proud and selfish vanity 3. Another sort that are in danger of this sin are Divines and Learned men in all Professions who make their Writings but a means to perpetuate their own Names to Posterity Temptations to this sin may be offered to the best and too much entertainment they may have with our natures because of the remnants of selfishness and Pride But yet they do not prevail with the sanctified so far as to aim more at their own honour than at Gods The Labours that in themselves are excellent and a blessing to the Church are lost to him that was the Author of them if self be the End and Pride the fountain And exceeding great need have the godliest men to watch their hearts in this particular for they are very deceitsul and selfishness will too often interpose where nothing but God and publick good is discerned And now because that the sin is very great and dangerous I shall here annex a few Considerations which by opening the evil of it may help you to abhor it 1. These Proud desires of a great and surviving Name do shew that you lamentably overlook the true eternal honour of the Saints Must you have Honour choose that which lieth in the esteem of God Must you be great and glorious why you may be so and God would have you be so if you will but know where Greatness and Glory is to be had even in that blessedness that Christ hath purchased Must you have your greatness and honour perpeuated why you may have that which will never have an end And when God hath set before you such an endless glory are you looking after a Name among mortal men to leave behind you on the Earth Do you think to be saved indeed or not If you do what need have you of the smoak of mans applause when you are with God what unworthythoughts have you of heaven if you think when you are there you shall have need of mens good thoughts or words on earth But it 's a dangerous sign that you are indeed unbelievers and lay not up your treasure in heaven when you are so careful to perpetuate your names and shaddows here with men The true reliâ—h of Heavenly honour would put you out of love with this 2. And do you not plainly see in your own desires the vanity of all these Earthly things when you are put at last to take up with such a shaddow such a Nothing as is a surviving name Is this all that the world can do for you And do you not see here the wonderous deceitfulness of the world and the foolishness of unsanctified men that they will dâ—â—s stick to the world for very nothing when they know that they shall have no more from it they are contriving for a name when they are dead Wonderful blindness that experience and the approach and thoughts of death should no more open your eyes surely if this be all that the world will do for you at the last you should even renounce it and use it accordingly at the first 3. You cannot but know that when you are dead and gone the Honour of the world is none of yours nor can it do you any good any further than it relateth to your eternal blessedness and your honour is serviceable to the honor of God What good will it do you to be magnified by men when you neither know nor feel it what the better is a Tree or House if men commend it And for your souls if they be with God they will be far above the praise of men 4. Nay as such a design is a dangerous sign of your Damnation so I beseech you think what
giveth him not his own in Love or Praises Object What say you then by the wishes of Moses and Paul Answ 1. The saying of Moses is very plain Exod. 32. 32. He doth not desire that his soul might be made a ransom for Israel but that if God would not pardon them but destroy them and cast them off he would blot out Moses name from his Book that is from among the number of the living so that his saying is no other than such as Elias or Jonas was What good will my life do me if I live to see thy people cast off and all thy wonders for them buryed therefore either let them live in thy sight or kill me with them This is the plain meaning of Moses request And for Pauls the difficulty is somewhat greater 1. Some think that Paul meaneth Rom. 9. 3. that he once wished himself to be no Christan in the days of his ignorance and all through his Zeal for the Jewith Nation But this is improbable 2. Some think that he meaneth only I could wish to be given up to death for them as the accursed under the Law 3. Some think he meaneth only I could wish my self yet unconverted to Christ so they were converted 4. Some think the meaning is I could wish my self cast out of the Church and given up to Satan for any bodily suffering 5. Some say it is only to have his salvation deferred 6. And some that it is damnation for a time But 7. The plain meaning seemeth to be this so great is my Love to my Countrymen the Jews that if it were offered to my choice whether they or I without them should enjoy Christ I would yield to be cast out of his sight for ever rather than they should where mark 1. That it is not a wish that it were so for he knew that this was no means to promote their salvation but it 's a discovery of his affection that would with or choose this if it were a means to that End 2. And it is not the sin of not Loving Christ that he would choose but only the misery of being deprived of his blessed presence 3. And the Reasons of this his choice are these two conjunct 1. Because the souls of so many thousands is in impartial Reason more to be valed than the soul of one 2. And principally because by the conversion and salvation of a whole Nation God may be more honored and served than by one And note farther 1. That this is not set as a mark for every Christian to try the truth of his Love by 2. But yet no doubt but it is a duty and degree of Grace that every one should aim at For 1. We see among Heathens that nature it self teacheth them that a man should lay down his life for his Country because a Country is better than a man And proportionably Reason tells us that the salvation of a Country being a greater good than of any one it should be more preferred And self-Self-love goeth against plain Reason when it contradicteth this What mans Reason doth not tell him that it were better he should die than the world should be destroyed or the Sun turned into darkness yea or that one Church or Country perish And so of salvation 2. And it is agreeable to the nature of Love to desire that most that most Pleaseth him whom we Love and therefore to desire rather that God may have multitudes than one and be served and Praised by them So much about the Matter of self-denial III. I Have finished the two first things which I promised you under the use of Exhortation viz. the trial of your self-denial and the particulars in which it consisteth and must be exercised and there I have shewed you 1. In what respect self must be denied 2. What that selfishness is that must be denied as to the inward Disposition and 3. What is that objective self-interest that must be denied which consisteth in so many Particulars that I cannot undertake to enumerate all but I have mentioned twenty Particulars under the general head of Pleasure and ten under the general Head of Honour and have referred you to another Treatise for that which consisteth in worldly profits And now I come to the third part of my work which is to shew you a little more fully the Greatness of the sin of selfishness and give you thence such moving reasons as may conduce to the cure of it which are these that follow CHAP. LXIII Motives 1. Selfishness the grand Idolatry of the world 1. SElfishness is the grand Idolatry of the world and self the worlds Idol as I have told you before It usurpeth the Place of God himself in mens Judgements wills affections and endeavours It was the work of the ten Discoveries in the Beginning of the Book to demonstrate this and therefore I shall say but little more But self-denial destroyeth the worlds great Idol and giveth God his own again The selfish lean most to their own understandings but the self-denying trust the Wisdom of God The selfish are careful principally for themselves and their own felicity even a terrene and carnal kind of felicity But the self-denying are principally careful how they may Please and Honour God and promote the welfare of his Church and in this way attain the spiritual everlasting felicity of the Saints The selfish must have their own humors pleased and their own wills accomplished and their own desires granted But the self-denying do slay their own carnal wills desires and conceits and lay them dead at the feet of Christ that his will alone may be exalted The selfish would have all men love them admire them and commend them But the self-denying would have all men to Love Admire and Glorifie the Lord above himself and all the world The selfish can bear with Gods enemies but not with their Own and they can suffer men to wrong Cod and sin against him more patiently than they can suffer them to wrong themselves But it is contrary with the self-denying A wrong to God and his Church seemeth far greater to them than a wrong against themselves In a word the selfish intend themselves and live to themselves and the self-denying intend God and live to him in the course of their lives And therefore when the selfish are troubled about many things the self-denying are minding the One thing Necessary And when the selfish are seeking to know what is good or evil to their flesh the self-denying are seeking to Please the Lord and desire to know nothing but him in Christ crucified and they could part with all the knowledge of the creatures as useful to themselves if they could but know more of God in Christ The selfish would be in his own hands at his own dispose and government and the self-denying would be in the hands of God and at his dispose and Government And doubtless the very state of mans Apostacy did lie in
you by God that you may be Accepted by him and offer your selves and all your labors purely to him and to his honour and his will God will take these for honourable services and you are as truly at his work even in your shops and fields as Princes are in Ruling or Pastors in teaching or guiding the flock you that are poor and cannot set so much time apart for reading and other holy duties as some other do see that you neglect no holy opportunity that you can take and then consider that if God set you to do him service even by washing dishes or sweeping channels or the meanest drudgery he will accept it and the more by how much the more humble submission and self-denial is found in it Take him as the only Lord and Master of your souls and lives and all that you have and when you are called to your daily labour look but to your hearts that God be your End and that you can truly say I do not this principally to provide for my self but as an obedient child in my Fathers service because he bids me do it and it is pleasing to him through Christ I do it not principally from self-self-love but from the Love of God that commandeth me my work and as a traveller that laboureth in his way for the love of his home so I am here at labour in this world in the place that God hath set me that I may in his appointed way attain the everlasting glory that he hath promised I say do but see to it that thus you dedicate your labours to God and you may take comfort in the daily labours of your lives even the meanest and most contemptible as well as Princes and Preachers may in their more honourable works Nay all your labours are honoured and sanctified by this For all is Holy that is heartily devoted to God upon his invitation And thus all things are pure to the pure For it is Gods interest in your work that is the holiness and excellency of them Were servants and labouring people more Holy and self-denying they might have more true comfort in their daily labour than the best of the unsanctified can have from their prayers or other worship of God Not that worship may be therefore neglected but that a Christian must do nothing at all but for God and then he may be sure of Gods Acceptance CHAP. LXX Deny Self or you will deny Christ 8. MOreover the selfish will never suffer as Christians but deny Christ in a day of trial when the self-denying will go through all and be saved Nothing doth so througly try whether self or God be best beloved as suffering for his cause In this it is that Christ useth to try mens self-denial and it is a principal use of persecution When you hear of coming before Rulers and Judges and being hated of all men for Christs name sake then self riseth up to plead for its interest and never maketh more ado than when it seeth the flames The flesh cannot Reason but it can strive against Reason and draw it to its side No Reason seemeth sufficient to it to perswade it to choose a suffering state If you perswade a Carnal man to let go his estate to be poor and despised in the world and to give up life it self if it be called for and all this for the hope of an invisible felicity you lose your labour till God set in and all such reasoning seems to him most unreasonable And what a dreadful case such souls are in my Text and many another passage in Scripture may convince you If you cannot drink of his cup and be baptized with his baptism you cannot be advanced with him to glory Through many tribulations we must enter into the Kingdom of God The pleasing of the flesh is the high way to misery by displeasing God and the voluntary submission to the suffering of the flesh for the cause of Christ is the high way to felicity 2 Tim. 2. 11 12. It is a faithful saying for if we be dead with him we shall also live with him if we suffer we shall also reign with him if we deny him he also will deny us Rom. 8. 17. Yea and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution 2 Tim. 3. 12. The day of trial is a kind of Judgement day to the selfish unsanctified man For it discovereth his hypocrisie and sheweth him to be but dross and separateth him from the suffering servants of Christ But self-denial maketh suffering light and will make you wish that you had any thing worth the resigning unto Christ and any thing by the denial whereof you might serve him For him you would suffer the loss of all things and account them dross and dung that you may win him Phil. 3. 8. He will count us worthy of the Kingdom for which we suffer 2 Thes 1. 5. As the Captain of our salvation was made perfect by suffering Heb. 2. 10. so also must his members by filling up the measure and being made partakers of his sufferings and knowing the fellowship of them 2 Cor. 1. 5 6 7. Phil. 3. 10. And the God of all grace who hath called us into his eternal glory by Christ Jesus after we have suffered a while will make us perfect stable strengthen and settle us 1 Pet. 5. 10. If therefore you would not prove Apostates and deny Christ in a day of trial and be denied by him before his Father aud the holy Angels see that you now learn this needful Lesson of self-denial CHAP. LXXI The selfish deal worse with God than with Satan 9. COnsider also that selfish Carnal men deal worse with God than they do with the Devil and sin it self God offereth them Christ and pardon and eternal life if they will but deny themselves in a thing of nought and they will not be ruled or perswaded by him The Devil offereth them but the delights of the flesh and the pleasures of sin for a season and they will deny ten thousand sold more for this They will deny God their Maker and Redeemer their Lord and Judge their Preserver and their hope though he have the only Title to them and their lives and souls be in his hand They will for the sake of a filthy lust or of a short and miserable life deny him that never did them wrong nay that hath always shewed them kindness even all the kindness that ever they received and that when they know that their everlasting state must stand or fall according to his judgement They will deny the Lord Jesus the Redeemer of their souls They will deny and resist the holy spirit of God They will deny his Laws his Gospel-promises and all his Mercies They will deny his Ministers and all their perswasions and daily labours They will deny their dearest Christian friends and deny their own Consciences and Convictions and deny themselves the Peace and Joy which they might
fleshly Pleasures tend He that by faith hath seen both Heav'n and Hell And what sin costeth at the last can tell He that hath try'd and tasted Better things And felt that love from which all pleasure springs They that still watch and for Christs coming wait Can turn away from or despise the bait Flesh Must I be made the foot-ball of disdain And call'd a precise fool or Puritane Spirit Remember him that did despise the shame And for thy sake bore undeserved blame Thy journey 's of small moment if thou stay Because dogs bark or stones lie in the way If life lay on it wouldst thou turn again For the winds blowing or a little rain Is this thy greatest love to thy dear Lord That canst not for his sake bear a foul word Wilt thou not bear for him a scorners breath That underwent for thee a cursed death Is not Heav'n worth the bearing of a flout Then blame not Justice when it shuts thee out Will these deriders stand to what they say And own their words at the great dreadful day Then they 'd be glad when wrath shall overtake them To eat their wrrds and say they never spake them Flesh How Forsake all Ne're mention it more to me I 'le be of no Religion to undo me Spirit Is it not thine more in thy Fathers hand Than when it is laid out at sins command And is that sav'd that 's spent upon thy lust Or which must be a prey to thieves or rust And wouldst thou have thy riches in thy way Where thou art passing on and canst not stay And is that lost that 's sent to Heav'n before Hadst thou not rather have thy friends and store Where thou may dwell for ever in the light Of that long glorious day that fears no night Flesh But who can willingly submit to Death Which will bereave us of our life and breath That laies our flesh to rot in loathsome graves Where brains and eyes were leaves but ugly caves Spirit So nature breaks and casts away the shell Where the now beauteous singing bird did dwell The secundine that once the infant cloath'd After the birth is cast away and loath'd Thus Roses drop their sweet leaves under-foot But the Spring shews that life was in the root Souls are the Roots of Bodies Christ the Head Is Root of both and will revive the dead Our Sun still shineth when with us it's night When he returns we shall shine in his light Souls that behold and praise God with the Just Mourn not because their bodies are but dust Graves are but beds where flesh till morning sleep's Or Chests where God a while our garments keep 's Our folly thinks he spoils them in the keeping Which causeth our excessive fears and Weeping But God that doth our rising day foresee Pittie 's not rotting flesh so much as we The birth of Nature was deform'd by sin The birth of Grace did our repair begin The birth of Glory at the Resurrection Finisheth all and brings both to persection Why should not fruit when it is mellow fall Why would we linger here when God doth call Flesh The things and persons in this world I see But after death I know not what will be Spirit Know'st thou not that which God himself hath spoken Thou hast his promise which was never broken Reason proclaims that noble heav'n-born souls Are made for higher things than worms and moles God hath not made such faculties in vain Nor made his service a deluding pain But faith resolves all doubts and hears the Lord Telling us plainly by his Holy Word That uncloath'd souls shall with their Saviour dwell Triumphing over sin and death and hell And by the power of Almighty Love Stars shall arise from graves to shine above There we shall see the Glorious face of God His blessed presence shall be our abode The face that banisheth all doubts and fears Shuts out all sins and dryeth up all tears That face which darkeneth the Suns bright rayes Shall shine us into everlasting joyes Where Saints and Angels shall make up one Chore To praise the Great Jehovah evermore Flesh Reason not with me against sight and sense I doubt all this is but a vain pretence Words against nature are not worth a rush One bird in hand is worth two in the bush If God will give me Heav'n at last I 'le take it But for my Pleasure here I 'le not forsake it Spirit And wilt thou keep it bruitsh flesh how long Wilt thou not shortly sing another song When Conscience is awakened keep thy mirth When Sickness and Death comes hold fast this earth Live if thou canst when God saith come away Try whether all thy friends can cause thy stay Wilt thou tell death and God thou wilt not die And wilt thou the consuming fire defie Art thou not sure to let go what thou hast And doth not Reason bid thee then forecast And value the least hope of endless joyes Before known vanities and dying toyes And can the Lord that is most just and wise Found all mans duty in deceit and lies GET thee behind me Satan thou dost savour The things of flesh and not his dearest favour Who is my Life and Light and Love and All And so shall be whatever shall befall It is not thou but I that must discern And must Resolve It 's I that hold the stern Be silent Flesh speak not against my God Or else hee 'l teach thee better by the rod. I am resolved thou shalt live and die A servant or a conquered enemy LOrd charge not on me what this rebel sayes That alwaies was against me and thy wayes Now stop its mouth by Grace that shortly must Through just but gainful death be stopt with dust The thoughts and words of Flesh are none of mine Let Flesh say what it will I will be thine Whatever this rebellious Flesh shall prate Let me but serve the Lord at any rate Use me on earth as seemeth good to thee So I in Heav'n thy Glorious face may see Take down my Pride let me dwell at thy feet The humble are for earth and heav'n most meet Renouncing Flesh I Vow my self to thee With all the Talents thou hast lent to me Let me not stick at honour wealth or blood Let all my dayes be spent in doing good Let me not trifle out more precious hours But serve thee now with all my strength and powers If Flesh would tempt me to deny my hand Lord these are the Resolves to which I stand Richard Baxter October 29. 1659. The laâ—e Lord Chief Justice Oliver St. John See my Reasons of the Christ â—â—â—g since written I may with Tertullian call all our enemies to search their Court Records and â—ce how many of us have been cast out or silenced for any immorality but for obeying Conscience against the interest or wills of some who think that Conscience should give place to their Commands Read the two or three last Chapters in Dr. Holden's Analâ—fidei Read Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Rogers books against me and the souldiers openly thâ—â— calumaiâ—â—ed me and thâ—e in eâ— my death as the said Authors â—eâ—red them to call me to a trâ—al even for speaking and writing against their casting dow the Government of the Land â—â—ing 〈◊〉 themselves and aâ—â—â—pting at once to Vo e out all the â—arâ—â—h 〈◊〉 I know that it hardneâ—h thousands in impenitency to say that Others have done worse and Is the matter mended with you And will it also eâ—se men in heâ—l to think that some others suffer more The Quuakers and other Self-esteemers are reverthemore reconcil'd to us now we have been eleven years turned out of all So common it is for selfish meâ— to make their gain sayers as odious as they can devise that I conâ—eâ—s I wondred that I me with no more of this dealing my self from Papists Anabaptists or any that have turned their stiâ—e against me And at last Mr. Pierce hath answered my expectation and from my own confession not knowing me himself hath drawn my picture that I am Proâ—â—i Lazie False an Hypocrite uâ—just a Reader c. And from this Bolsecks credit I make no doubt but the Papists will think they may warrantably descrâ—bâ— me if I be thought worthy their reâ—embrance in all following Ageâ— though now I have nothing from them but good wordâ— But it is a small thing to be judged by man especially when our â—â—uâ—â— enjoy the Lord. They way-laid the Messengers that I sent Letters by to friends took them from the â— by force seâ—â— them to 〈…〉 to the Council of State to the trouble of those I wrote to though nothing was found but â—â—noâ—ency And this was by my old 〈…〉 who differed from â—â—â— in nothing but â—â—tant 〈…〉 Changes of our Government and yet 〈…〉